Cocoapods: Failed to archive, Pods framework is not created and linking fails

[radianttap]

• [x] I've read and understood the CONTRIBUTING guidelines and have done my best effort to follow.

Report

When building for either Simulator or device, everyhing works. Here's a build report.

When archiving project, I get an error:

ld: framework not found Pods_iOSApp_MyApp

which is understandable because when looking at the Release.iphoneos folder, .framework is not there. When reviewing the archive report I see that the lines which should build the framework do not appear.

What did you do?

I am trying for days now, to find the cause of this issue. Tried everything I could find either here or on SO.
pod deintegrate & install (multiple times), clean build, nuked derived data etc.

Using Xcode 11.2.1.

What did you expect to happen?

Archive to succeed.

What happened instead?

Archive failed.

CocoaPods Environment

Stack

   CocoaPods : 1.8.4
        Ruby : ruby 2.6.5p114 (2019-10-01 revision 67812) [x86_64-darwin18]
    RubyGems : 3.0.6
        Host : Mac OS X 10.14.6 (18G1012)
       Xcode : 11.2.1 (11B500)
         Git : git version 2.17.0
Ruby lib dir : /usr/local/Cellar/ruby/2.6.5/lib
Repositories : trunk - CDN - https://cdn.cocoapods.org/

Installation Source

Executable Path: /usr/local/bin/pod

Plugins

cocoapods-deintegrate : 1.0.4
cocoapods-plugins     : 1.0.0
cocoapods-search      : 1.0.0
cocoapods-stats       : 1.1.0
cocoapods-trunk       : 1.4.1
cocoapods-try         : 1.1.0

Podfile

use_frameworks!

abstract_target 'iOSApp' do
    platform :ios, '11.0'

    # Core Data stack
    pod 'Ambar',    :git => 'https://github.com/radianttap/Ambar.git'

    # Auto Layout helpers in code
    pod 'TinyConstraints',  :git => 'https://github.com/radianttap/TinyConstraints'

    # Image Cache
    pod 'Kingfisher',   :git => 'https://github.com/radianttap/Kingfisher.git'

    # JSON parser
    pod 'Marshal',  :git => 'https://github.com/radianttap/Marshal.git'

    # CommonCrypto wrapper
    pod 'Arcane',   :git => 'https://github.com/radianttap/Arcane.git'

    # Keychain wrapper
    pod 'KeychainAccess',   :git => 'https://github.com/radianttap/KeychainAccess.git'

    # Obj-C based PageViewController replacement
    pod 'SCPageViewController',     :git => 'https://github.com/radianttap/SCPageViewController.git'

    # CleanroomLogger
    pod 'CleanroomLogger',  :git => 'https://github.com/radianttap/CleanroomLogger.git', :branch => 'cocoapods'

    # Zip utility
    pod 'Zip',  :git => 'https://github.com/radianttap/Zip.git'

    # JWT generation is needed for Video streaming
    pod 'JSONWebToken',     :git => 'https://github.com/radianttap/JSONWebToken.swift.git', :branch => 'podspec'

    # Voucher, for login into tvOS using iOS app
    pod 'Voucher',  :git => 'https://github.com/radianttap/Voucher.git'

    # AppCenter
    pod 'AppCenter/Analytics'
    pod 'AppCenter/Crashes'

  # Firebase
  pod 'Firebase/Messaging'
  pod 'Firebase/Analytics'


# Targets
    target 'MyApp'
end

abstract_target 'watchOSApp' do
    platform :watchos, '5.0'

    pod 'Ambar',    :git => 'https://github.com/radianttap/Ambar.git'
    pod 'Marshal',  :git => 'https://github.com/radianttap/Marshal.git'
    pod 'Arcane',   :git => 'https://github.com/radianttap/Arcane.git'
    pod 'KeychainAccess',   :git => 'https://github.com/radianttap/KeychainAccess.git'
    pod 'CleanroomLogger',  :git => 'https://github.com/radianttap/CleanroomLogger.git', :branch => 'cocoapods'
    pod 'Zip',  :git => 'https://github.com/radianttap/Zip.git'

# Targets
    target 'MyAppwatch Extension'
end

Project that demonstrates the issue

Unfortunatelly this project is way too complex to cleanup and post as example. Note that this project is about 4 years old, fully updated to Swift 5, was archiving just fine about 5 months ago with the cococapods 1.7.2, if I remember correctly.
Since then, cocoapods was upgraded to latest version and Xcode is updated.

[radianttap]

TL;DR: Podfile had platform set to iOS 11, while the minimum deployment target in the project itself was iOS 10. Changing from 10 to 11 solved the issue.

It's probably useful to list troubleshooting steps that led me to figure the cause. I switched to Legacy build system to see would it archive properly. First tried build for generic iOS device and it threw this warning:

Target 'Pods-iOSApp-MyApp' of project 'Pods' was rejected as an implicit dependency for 'Pods_iOSApp_MyApp.framework' because its architectures 'arm64' didn't contain all required architectures 'armv7 arm64'

This was rather confusing so naturally ducked[^1] it, which yielded this answer on SO

Also make sure that your podfile targets the same iOS version your project targets

After matching up the versions, both Legacy and Modern Build system produce a proper archive.