Different result on CocoaPod install with identical Podspecs for EarlGrey 2.0 app

I am trying to figure out why I get two different results after running pod install on what should be identical podspec files. The component is called EarlGreyApp, which had a 2.0.0 release this year. The podspec for the 2.0.0 release is here in the earlgrey2 branch of the EarlGrey repo: https://github.com/google/EarlGrey/blob/earlgrey2/EarlGreyApp.podspec

When I have this defined in the podfile (I am using Demo/EarlGreyExample to reproduce) :

 target 'EarlGreyExampleSwift' do
  pod 'EarlGreyApp', '2.0.0'
 end

It correctly modifies this section of EarlGreyExample.xcodeproj/project.pbxproj to reference EarlGrepApp's AppFramework.framework component:

/* Begin PBXShellScriptBuildPhase section */
                4D216774E658C2E4470F936E /* [CP] Embed Pods Frameworks */ = {
                        isa = PBXShellScriptBuildPhase;
                        buildActionMask = 2147483647;
                        files = (
                        );
                        inputPaths = (
                                "${PODS_ROOT}/Target Support Files/Pods-EarlGreyExampleSwift/Pods-EarlGreyExampleSwift-frameworks.sh",
                                "${PODS_ROOT}/EarlGreyApp/AppFramework.framework",
                        );
                        name = "[CP] Embed Pods Frameworks";
                        outputPaths = (
                                "${TARGET_BUILD_DIR}/${FRAMEWORKS_FOLDER_PATH}/AppFramework.framework",
                        );
                        runOnlyForDeploymentPostprocessing = 0;
                        shellPath = /bin/sh;
                        shellScript = "\"${PODS_ROOT}/Target Support Files/Pods-EarlGreyExampleSwift/Pods-EarlGreyExampleSwift-frameworks.sh\"\n";
                        showEnvVarsInLog = 0;
                };

However when I change the podfile to point to the branch:

target 'EarlGreyExampleSwift' do
  pod 'EarlGreyApp', :git => 'https://github.com/google/EarlGrey.git', :branch => 'earlgrey2'
end

The above section does not get generated into the project.pbxproj file.

I am at a loss to explain why as the podspec registered for EarlGreyApp should be the same. When I do pod spec cat EarlGreyApp I see the same contents as what is in the earlgrey2 branch.

pod spec cat EarlGreyApp --show-all Shows me that there are only two Podspecs available, 2.0.0 and 2.0.0-rc

Any ideas on what the difference could be?

The reason for this is because the Podspec is not published through the earlgrey2 branch it is published through the earlgrey2pod branch.

The reason for this is some users want to use EarlGrey without CocoaPods and some want to use it with. The two branches have subtle differences to allow for both use cases (compiling issues).

Additionally there are further intricacies with CocoaPods when you do a manual pod install, as you did when you referenced the github directly. I would recommend not trying that. Since EarlGreyApp is compiled as a Framework you cannot just do that unfortunately (you can with EarlGreyTest which is compiled from source). CocoaPods has poor undefined behavior in this regard.