One long-standing issue with Cloud Firestore is that Flutter Xcode builds take a long time, especially on CI environments. This is because the Firestore iOS depends on 500k lines of mostly C++ code, that are compiled from scratch as part of the Xcode build.
Fortunately, a solution is now available and documented here:
To speed up your build times, you can use invertase/firestore-ios-sdk-frameworks, which contains precompiled Firestore iOS SDKs extracted from the Firebase iOS SDK release downloads.
To take advantage of this, follow these two steps:
1. Find which version of the Firestore iOS SDK is in use
You can do so by opening the ios/Podfile.lock and searching for cloud_firestore.
You should find something like this:
- cloud_firestore (3.1.4):
- Firebase/Firestore (= 8.9.0)
- firebase_core
- Flutter
Make a note of the Firebase/Firestore version (8.9.0 in this case).
2. Use the precompiled Firestore iOS SDK
Open the Podfile inside the ios folder, then add this line inside your target 'Runner' do block:
target 'Runner' do
pod 'FirebaseFirestore', :git => 'https://github.com/invertase/firestore-ios-sdk-frameworks.git', :tag => '8.9.0'
# ...
end
Note: the first time you try this, you may get this error log:
[!] CocoaPods could not find compatible versions for pod "FirebaseFirestore":
In snapshot (Podfile.lock):
FirebaseFirestore (= 8.9.1, ~> 8.9.0)
In Podfile:
FirebaseFirestore (from `https://github.com/invertase/firestore-ios-sdk-frameworks.git`, tag `8.9.0`)
None of your spec sources contain a spec satisfying the dependencies: `FirebaseFirestore (from `https://github.com/invertase/firestore-ios-sdk-frameworks.git`, tag `8.9.0`), FirebaseFirestore (= 8.9.1, ~> 8.9.0)`.
You have either:
* out-of-date source repos which you can update with `pod repo update` or with `pod install --repo-update`.
* mistyped the name or version.
* not added the source repo that hosts the Podspec to your Podfile.
This is solved by removing ios/Podfile.lock and rebuilding.
You're welcome! 😎
