iOS is it a static or a dynamic framework?
This might sound like a silly question but If you have a thirdParty.framework file, can you tell if it's static or dynamic? I mean, do they look different if you look inside?
It can be either.
Only iOS8+ will allow dynamic frameworks in the app bundle, however.
The way to find out is to look in the .framework
and use the file
command on the main file:
$ cd iOS/Crashlytics.framework
$ ls -l
total 9984
-rwxr-xr-x 1 andy staff 4710656 11 Sep 17:11 Crashlytics
drwxr-xr-x 8 andy staff 272 11 Sep 17:11 Headers
-rw-r--r-- 1 andy staff 1553 11 Sep 17:11 Info.plist
drwxr-xr-x 3 andy staff 102 11 Sep 17:11 Modules
-rwxr-xr-x 1 andy staff 146164 11 Sep 17:11 run
-rwxr-xr-x 1 andy staff 241688 11 Sep 17:11 submit
$ file Crashlytics
Crashlytics: Mach-O universal binary with 5 architectures
Crashlytics (for architecture armv7): current ar archive random library
Crashlytics (for architecture armv7s): current ar archive random library
Crashlytics (for architecture i386): current ar archive random library
Crashlytics (for architecture x86_64): current ar archive random library
Crashlytics (for architecture arm64): current ar archive random library
Where ar archive
means "static library".
Alternatively, a "dynamic" framework will look like this and explicitly state that it's dynamically linked.
$ cd /Library/Frameworks/iTunesLibrary.framework/
$ ls -l
total 40
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 24 10 Sep 17:38 Headers -> Versions/Current/Headers
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 24 10 Sep 17:38 Modules -> Versions/Current/Modules
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 26 10 Sep 17:38 Resources -> Versions/Current/Resources
drwxr-xr-x 4 root wheel 136 10 Sep 17:41 Versions
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 22 10 Sep 17:38 XPCServices -> Versions/A/XPCServices
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 30 10 Sep 17:38 iTunesLibrary -> Versions/Current/iTunesLibrary
$ file Versions/Current/iTunesLibrary
Versions/Current/iTunesLibrary: Mach-O universal binary with 2 architectures
Versions/Current/iTunesLibrary (for architecture i386): Mach-O dynamically linked shared library i386
Versions/Current/iTunesLibrary (for architecture x86_64): Mach-O 64-bit dynamically linked shared library x86_64
I use this command to list all STATIC Frameworks from a path with a list of frameworks:
find -E . -type f -iregex ".*\.framework\/[^./]*" -exec file {} \; | grep ': current ar archive' | sed 's/.*\/\(.*.framework\).*/\1/'