Is there any point to use cocoapods integration for mono-repo project layout (when ios and android are co-located in the same GIT repo)? For a regular iOS dev I wouldn't publish framework as a pod in that case, just linking it directly to iOS app. So we're inclining towards linking objc framework (built by KN compiler) from XCode.

I don't see any points. I prefer to add a Gradle task into build phase in xcode.

I don’t know if there’s a “point” but different teams prefer/hate cocoapods. I find it to be easier to integrate kotlin into an ios project, but that’s a 1 time cost. However, we also have a dual setup for one client. The shared code is available as a binary so if a dev doesn’t want to touch or build kolin, it’ll build, but you can flip a flag to edit/compile kotlin. That’s all managed with cocoapods. You can also do that with Xcode targets, but that can get complicated.