We were evaluating Masonry prior to our new 3rd party lib vetting process (See here for more info: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Apps/Team/iOS/Third_Party_Libraries), but still wanted to do a write up for everyone.

Masonry is a library that allows developers to write autolayout code similar to the Visual Format Language, but instead of error prone strings to describe relationships, it provides a compact compiler checked syntax. You can read more here:

https://github.com/Masonry/Masonry

Below are answers to our standard questions:

• Is the license permissive? 

Yes - MIT

• Is the library ubiquitous? 

Yes 4,362+ stars and 475 forks on Github.

•  Is it installable via CocoaPods?
  

Yes

• What is the impact on binary size? 

Negligible - no included assets

• How severe, if at all, are inbuilt subdependencies? 

No 3rd party dependencies

• Will this make the code more, or less, understandable for volunteers? 

More understandable - it provides an expressive "english" syntax for creating autolayout constraints. It introduces no new concepts, just type checking and syntax.

• What are the performance ramifications of using this library? 

None, it uses cocoa autolayout under the covers.

• What are the complexity ramifications of using this library? 

Masonry allows developers to write layout code in a much more concise and expressive way - this should reduce number of lines while increasing expressiveness. 

• Is it actively maintained? 

Yes and receives frequent pull requests.

• Is it compatible with current deployment targets? 

Yep

• Does it hinder interop (e.g., with Swift)?

Nope

• What is the exit plan if the library becomes unmaintained? 

Since Masonry is basically just a syntax veneer of autolayout - it should be possible for us to maintain if needed. There aren't any foreign concepts to understand. If we choose not to maintain - the constraints can be translated to the VFL language (or Interface Builder) easily.

If anyone has questions / comments - please reply here.

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