cocoapods-patch is a Cocoapods plugin that solves the problem of forking and maintaining a separate version of a Pod when only a small (often a one-liner), long-lived change in the original Pod is needed.
The idea behind the plugin is that patches should live inside the repo (in the patches directory) and be distributed together with the rest of your source code. This way, you can more easily code review and test the changes to a Pod and keep it synced across your team.
First, install the plugin
$ gem install cocoapods-patch
Next, add a plugin 'cocoapods-patch' line to your Podfile to use the plugin. This will enable automatic apply so you don't have to worry about it again.
That's it, you're done.
To create a patch, first, you need to modify the source code of the installed Pod. Do the desired changes to the Pod source code (under the Pods/ directory). Once you're satisfied with the result, run:
pod patch create POD_NAME
This will create a patches/POD_NAME.diff file in your repository. The patch is a diff between the Pod version you have specified in your Podfile and your local changes to the Pod. You can now add and commit this patch.
cocoapod-patch can be seamlessly integrated into the normal iOS development workflow. If you follow the installation instructions and add plugin 'cocoapods-patch' to your Podfile, every time you do a pod install, the plugin will go throught all the available patches and try to apply them. It will only warn you when the patch cannot be applied.
When you want to apply a patch to a pod, run
pod patch apply POD_NAME
This command will look for the appropriate patch in the patches directory and, if possibly, apply it to your local Pod. A patch can be applied only once.