[Build] Building for Mac Catalyst Fails When Installed Via Cocoapods

[SeymourNickelson]

Describe the issue

When creating a new Xcode project (Objective-C/Storyboard) then created a pod file using pod 'onnxruntime-c' the build works fine for iOS but when switching to Mac Catalyst it fails with the following error: Framework 'onnxruntime' not found.

I see in the Release Notes that Mac Catalyst is now supported. I'm not sure if I need to configure the pod file in a special way to get Mac Catalyst support but I couldn't find any documentation on this.

I'm on Xcode Version 16.2 (16C5032a)

Urgency

No response

Target platform

Mac Catalyst

Build script

Using cocoapods onnxruntime-c

Error / output

ld: framework 'onnxruntime' not found

Visual Studio Version

No response

GCC / Compiler Version

No response

[skottmckay]

There's a mac-catalyst build in the nuget package for use by MAUI apps. You can get the xcframework from there if needed.

https://www.nuget.org/packages/Microsoft.ML.OnnxRuntime

The nupkg is zip file. onnxruntime.xcframework.zip is under runtimes/ios/native and contains ios, ios simulator and mac-catalyst builds.

[SeymourNickelson]

Ah I didn't realize that. Thanks for telling me about this. That's really helpful.

The xcframework I get from the Cocoapods supports iOS and Mac (but 'AppKit' not Catalyst). The xcframework in nupkg supports iOS and Catalyst (but not 'Appkit' Mac). The Mac ('Appkit') version in the nupkg is dylib like the one you provide in releases.

I don't really like using Cocoapods so I was just plucking the xcframework after doing pod install anyway. As a workaround I've been just using the Mac .dylib on Catalyst since onnxruntime has no UI code there is no issue and Catalyst and AppKit could technically be the same. I just changed the platform in LC_BUILD_VERSION to silence a warning about the platform in Xcode. But now that there is an xcframework I don't have to do this everytime I update the onnx runtime.

It would be convenient if you distributed a release for Apple platforms in a single xcframework (iOS, Mac Catalyst, Mac). I'm not sure if that's something you're willing to support though. I can piece together the Mac (AppKit version) from Cocoapods and the versions in the xcframework in the nupkg together. But being that these builds are already supported I imagine it would be easy to just distribute them all together as a single xcframework.

[SeymourNickelson]

I was able to take the frameworks inside .xcframework package from the Cocoapod,

and then take the framework for Mac Catalyst from the url you shared with me (https://www.nuget.org/packages/Microsoft.ML.OnnxRuntime)

And put them all together as one xcframework using xcodebuild -create-xcframework

This makes it a lot easier to link the onnxruntime from a multi(Apple)platform Xcode target. A single release would be really convenient though IMO.