Having different build targets (dev/release) in Podfile is not possible as it can not be specified with “pod install” command which target to install.

Other possible solution is to have “Podfile_dev” file besides Podfile. Podfile_dev’s SDK pods specifications would reference local folder with SDK. There could be a script in aerogear-ios-sdk repo to clone example app and update Podfile with content of Podfile_dev.