Example of how to reference a CocoaPod in Bazel

BUILD

ios_app(
    name = "App",
    hdrs = ["src/*.h"],
    srcs = ["src/*.m"],
    deps = [
      "@SDWebImage//:latest_library",
    ],
)

ios_test(
    name = "Test",
    hdrs = ["test/*.h"],
    srcs = ["test/*.m"],
    deps = [
      "@SDWebImage//:latest_library",
    ],
    xctest = 1,
)

objc_xcodeproj(
    name = "Project",
    deps = [
        ":App",
        ":Tests",
    ],
)

# bazel build :Project builds the app and unit tests

SDWebImage.BUILD

# Based on https://github.com/rs/SDWebImage/blob/master/SDWebImage.podspec
new_git_repository(
    name = "SDWebImage",
    remote = "https://github.com/rs/SDWebImage.git",
    build_file_content = """
objc_library(
    name = "latest_library",
    hdrs = glob(
        ["SDWebImage/{NS,SD,UI}*.h"],
        exclude = ["SDWebImage/UIImage+WebP.h"],
    ),
    srcs = glob(
        ["SDWebImage/{NS,SD,UI}*.m"],
        exclude = ["SDWebImage/UIImage+WebP.m"],
    ),
    sdk_frameworks = "ImageIO",
    visibility = ["//visibility:public"],
)""",
)

sdwebimage.podspec.json

{
  "name": "SDWebImage",
  "version": "3.7.1",
  "platforms": {
    "ios": "5.0"
  },
  "license": "MIT",
  "summary": "Asynchronous image downloader with cache support with an UIImageView category.",
  "homepage": "https://github.com/rs/SDWebImage",
  "authors": {
    "Olivier Poitrey": "rs@dailymotion.com"
  },
  "source": {
    "git": "https://github.com/rs/SDWebImage.git",
    "tag": "3.7.1"
  },
  "description": "This library provides a category for UIImageView with support for remote images coming from the web. It provides an UIImageView category adding web image and cache management to the Cocoa Touch framework, an asynchronous image downloader, an asynchronous memory + disk image caching with automatic cache expiration handling, a guarantee that the same URL won't be downloaded several times, a guarantee that bogus URLs won't be retried again and again, and performances!",
  "requires_arc": true,
  "frameworks": "ImageIO",
  "default_subspecs": "Core",
  "subspecs": [
    {
      "name": "Core",
      "source_files": "SDWebImage/{NS,SD,UI}*.{h,m}",
      "exclude_files": "SDWebImage/UIImage+WebP.{h,m}"
    },
    {
      "name": "MapKit",
      "source_files": "SDWebImage/MKAnnotationView+WebCache.*",
      "frameworks": "MapKit",
      "dependencies": {
        "SDWebImage/Core": [

        ]
      }
    },
    {
      "name": "WebP",
      "source_files": "SDWebImage/UIImage+WebP.{h,m}",
      "xcconfig": {
        "GCC_PREPROCESSOR_DEFINITIONS": "$(inherited) SD_WEBP=1"
      },
      "dependencies": {
        "SDWebImage/Core": [

        ],
        "libwebp": [

        ]
      }
    }
  ]
}

What is sdwebimage.podspec.json for and how to use it in bazel?

No clue either.
Thread for reference: bazelbuild/bazel#1813 (comment)

I think it was just a comparison between the podspec and the BUILD file for reference of how you may convert them

Correct, this doesn't (to my knowledge) actually exist, it's purely a "I wish the world worked like this."

Ah FWIW this works:

objc_library(
    name = "SDWebImage",
    srcs = glob(
        ["SDWebImage/*.m"],
        exclude = [
            "SDWebImage/UIImage+WebP.m",
            "SDWebImage/SDWebImageWebPCoder.m",
        ],
    ),
    hdrs = glob(
        ["SDWebImage/*.h"],
        exclude = [
            "SDWebImage/UIImage+WebP.h",
            "SDWebImage/SDWebImageWebPCoder.h",
        ],
    ),
    module_name = "SDWebImage",
    sdk_frameworks = [
        "ImageIO",
        "MobileCoreServices",
    ],
    visibility = ["//visibility:public"],
)

Sure, provided you download the SDWebImage source, yeah? I was hoping to jam that into Bazel so it could do some of the package management as well (even though that's not really what it's meant for).

EDIT: I guess if you do the git repo thing you can avoid that?

Yea we use this file with http_archive but git_repository would work just as well

For anyone who stumbles upon this again (hi Mike 👋) here's an updated BUILD file for the latest SDWebImage library

objc_library(
    name = "SDWebImage",
    srcs = glob(
        [
            "SDWebImage/Core/*.m",
            "SDWebImage/Private/*.m",
            "SDWebImage/Private/*.h",
        ],
        exclude = [],
    ),
    hdrs = glob(
        [
            "SDWebImage/Core/*.h",
        ],
        exclude = [],
    ),
    module_name = "SDWebImage",
    sdk_frameworks = [
        "ImageIO",
    ],
    includes = [
        "SDWebImage/Core",
        "SDWebImage/Private",
    ],
    visibility = ["//visibility:public"],
)