In iOS, should I be committing files with a `.a` file extension to my mercurial repository?

Question

I am fairly new to iOS development. I am using the iOS Admob SDK. When I tried to commit my changes to Mercurial I received the following message:

<working_dir>/GoogleMobileAdsSdkiOS-6.12.0/libGoogleAdMobAds.a: up to 39 MB of RAM may be required to manage this file
(use 'hg revert <working_dir>/GoogleMobileAdsSdkiOS-6.12.0/libGoogleAdMobAds.a' to cancel the pending addition)

Should I be committing files ending in .a to the repository or should I include it to .hgignore ?

Answer 1

IMO you should use Cocoapods and do not commit vendor libraries in your repository instead just push Podfile (if needed Podfile.lock) into your repo.

Read more about Cocoapods here - http://cocoapods.org/

For AdMob SDK here is how you can install it using Cocoapod - https://developers.google.com/mobile-ads-sdk/docs/admob/ios/quick-start#streamlined_using_cocoapods