[Bug]: `update ios` fails with `bundler: command not found: pod` on Linux CI after upgrading to 7.6.0

[philyy]

Capacitor Version

💊 Capacitor Doctor 💊

Latest Dependencies:

@capacitor/cli: 8.2.0
@capacitor/core: 8.2.0
@capacitor/android: unknown
@capacitor/ios: 8.2.0

Installed Dependencies:

@capacitor/android: not installed
@capacitor/cli: 7.6.0
@capacitor/ios: 7.0.0
@capacitor/core: 7.0.0

[error] Xcode is not installed

Other API Details

npm --version output:
10.9.4

node --version output:
v22.22.1

Platforms Affected

• iOS
• Android
• Web

Current Behavior

We upgraded @capacitor/cli from 7.4.4 to 7.6.0 to resolve the tar dependency security vulnerability. After the upgrade, all Ionic Appflow CI builds running on Linux 2025.01 build stack started failing.

✔ copy ios in 136.39ms
✔ Updating iOS plugins in 22.76ms
[info] Found 1 Cordova plugin for ios:
       cordova-plugin-ionic@5.5.3
✖ Updating iOS native dependencies with pod install - failed!
✖ update ios - failed!
[error] bundler: command not found: pod
        Install missing gem executables with `bundle install`
        


Running after_script
Running after script...
$ run "clean-up"

Cleaning up project directory and file based variables

ERROR: Job failed: command terminated with exit code 1

We tried setting packageManager in the iOS config of capacitor.config.ts to attempt to skip the iOS native dependency install on Linux but it has no effect:

export default {
  ios: {
    packageManager: 'Cocoapods',
  },
};

loadIOSConfig in cli/src/config.ts unconditionally calls determinePackageManager() and ignores the user-provided value:

const packageManager = lazy(() => determinePackageManager(rootDir, platformDirAbs, nativeProjectDirAbs));

This causes cap sync to fail on Linux CI environments when a Gemfile containing gem 'cocoapods' exists in the project and bundler is installed on the system. determinePackageManager() resolves to 'bundler' and unconditionally runs bundle exec pod install, which fails because CocoaPods cannot run on Linux.

PR #8344 fixed the non-bundler code path by adding an isInstalled('pod') check, but the bundler path has no equivalent guard — if packageManager resolves to 'bundler', it runs bundle exec pod install unconditionally.

Expected Behavior

Appflow Web build should succeed, skipping the pod install step on Web builds on Linux:

[03:20:31]: ▸ ✔ copy ios in 131.09ms
[03:20:31]: ▸ ✔ Updating iOS plugins in 23.35ms
[03:20:31]: ▸ [info] Found 1 Cordova plugin for ios:
[03:20:31]: ▸ cordova-plugin-ionic@5.5.3
[03:20:31]: ▸ [warn] Skipping pod install because CocoaPods is not installed
[03:20:31]: ▸ [warn] Unable to find "xcodebuild". Skipping xcodebuild clean step...
[03:20:31]: ▸ ✔ Updating iOS native dependencies with pod install in 7.68ms
[03:20:31]: ▸ [info] Found 18 Capacitor plugins for ios:
...
[03:20:31]: ▸ ✔ update ios in 109.06ms

Potentially if ios.packageManager is explicitly set in the Capacitor config, it should be respected and determinePackageManager() should not be called.

Project Reproduction

https://github.com/philyy/my-app

Additional Information

Run npx cap sync ios in the reproduction repo on Linux (tested on Ubuntu 22 LTS) and you should see the error.

We temporarily patched this with a yarn patch so if ios.packageManager is explicitly set in the Capacitor config, it should be respected and determinePackageManager() should not be called.

[jcesarmobile]

CocoaPods does work on linux, if installed, some users requested that Capacitor CLI should run pod install no matter what the OS is, since they had it working on linux.

The problem comes with bundler, it's failing to install cocoapods on linux, not sure if it's a new thing or if wasn't possible to install it before.

I've tried with 7.4.4 (and even 6.0.0) and I see the same problem, so doesn't look like it's related to the 7.5.0 changes.
Maybe you added the Gemfile recently?
If a Gemfile is present and it includes cocoapods, it will use bundler.

Or maybe something changed in appflow, since you say you are doing a web build it shouldn't be running npx cap sync ios.

[jcesarmobile]

I've been able to use bundler in linux, but npx cap sync ios still fails on bundle exec pod install , but happens in all Capacitor CLI versions.

Appflow was recently updated to add support for SPM, maybe that caused the issues.

Can you reach out Appflow support and provide your build ids so they can take a look?

Also would be good if you could check the logs of the last successful build and see if pod install was skipped or run.

[philyy]

Thanks for looking into this @jcesarmobile.

Our Gemfile has always been there, that didn't change so I don't think that was the cause.

I included the logs from the last successful build in the Expected Behaviour section above, it was skipped because CocoaPods is not installed.

I've created a support ticket with Appflow with the build ids.