Allow to skip the installation of any dependency

[fabiopelosin]

The podfile should support the following syntax:

skip 'Pod'
skip 'Pod/Subspec'

This feature is traversal to any block discussion. Moreover it is a cleaner and more general solution to #40.

[fabiopelosin]

Related: CocoaPods/CocoaPods#2312

[kylef]

Came into a problem with the following Podfile:

target 'EDN' do
  pod 'ReactiveCocoa'
end

target 'EDNTests' do
  pod 'Expecta'
  pod 'Expecta+ReactiveCocoa'
end

At runtime, when testing from the EDNTests target. Since TEST_HOST is set to the product of the EDN (main target). All Pods from the EDN target would be included at runtime. Since Expecta+ReactiveCocoa depends on ReactiveCocoa there will be two versions of ReactiveCocoa loaded at run time during the tests which can cause undefined problems.

This skip logic would allow you to workaround the problem by skipping the ReactiveCocoa dependency in the test target. But we still need to provide the headers. CocoaPods/CocoaPods#840 would ultimately make inherit for the test target would just do the right thing.

[AliSoftware]

@kylef and for whoever interested, I wrote an illustrated article that explains the case you're describing (= two versions of a pod loaded at runtime during hosted tests) here.

For those of you who really need hosted tests (TEST_HOST set to main target), a way to exclude pods in a target would indeed be ultimately useful.

[tomaskraina]

Any progress on this one?

[segiddins]

IMHO the proper fix to this is to have a test_dependency or something like that, which only adds header / framework search paths, instead of linking that dep to the pod itself.

[segiddins]

Closing as infeasible, but a PR with a proposal would be considered.