Cocoa Touch Framework vs Cocoa Touch Static library

Question

Any comment on Cocoa Touch Framework vs Cocoa Touch Static library?

Can you distribute a Framework like a static library without source code?

Answer 1

Cocoa Touch framework support was added in Xcode 6 primarily to support App Extensions in iOS 8 and Mac OS 10.10. App extensions have to be built as Cocoa Touch frameworks.

Frameworks also require less manual work to set up in a project than static libraries, although CocoaPods largely takes care of these pain points.

Frameworks can be - and are by by default - built without the source code in the build target. Usually only header file(s) are in the target. Therefore, you could create and share a binary only Framework.