Entitlement error when keying database with SQLCipher

[jcmanke]

I currently have a project working with SQLite.swift 0.15.4 and SQLCipher 4.10.0. To work around the issues with SPM and SQLCipher compatibility, we copied the entire source code of SQLite.swift into the repo and are getting SQLCipher community edition from GitHub.

I am now attempting to update to SQLite.swift 0.15.5 with the SQLCipher trait through Swift Package Manager. However, when I try to key my database I am getting an error I was not seeing before, about a sqlite-encryption entitlement being required.

This is my code to apply the key:

do {
    let db = try Connection(dbPath)
    let password = getPassword()
    try db.key(password)
} catch {
    logger.error("DB Init: encryption key failed - \(error.localizedDescription)")
    throw SQLiteInitializationError.encryptionKeyFailed(underlying: error)
}

This is what I see in the logs:

entitlement "com.apple.private.sqlite.sqlite-encryption" required to activate SEE
2026-02-18T13:25:29.818-06:00 [Error] [SQLiteManager.swift:153] [259] - DB Init: encryption key failed - The operation couldn’t be completed. (SQLite.Result error 0.)

In the debugger, the caught error has a message of "not an error" and the code is 21.

I am on Xcode 16.3 targeting a minimum version of iOS 17.

[jberkel]

@R4N any idea?

[R4N]

@jberkel @jcmanke

This looks like an integration issue where standard SQLite is being included/linked alongside SQLCipher. Check what's returned from cipherVersion, If nothing's being returned from that, then this almost definitely means you're including/linking standard SQLite. When you switched over to Swift Package Manager integration with traits, did you remove the entire source you had copied over from SQLite.swift?

Edit:

Or were you previously (and still are) explicitly linking standard/system sqlite. Check your build settings' > other linker flags and see if -lsqlite3 is present there, if so, remove it.

[jcmanke]

Yes, I have removed the entire SQLite.swift source. I am seeing a nil value returned from cipherVersion. I do not have an -lsqlite3 flag set.

As a workaround today, I started experimenting with referencing SQLite.swift with no traits specified in the Package.swift file, but copying the extension functions for SQLCipher. After running swift package resolve I saw this error message:

Working copy of https://github.com/stephencelis/SQLite.swift.git resolved at 0.15.4
error: Traits [SystemSQLite] have been enabled on package 'sqlite.swift' (SQLite.swift) that declares no traits.

[R4N]

To confirm, you're using the instructions here: https://github.com/stephencelis/SQLite.swift/blob/master/Documentation/Index.md#using-sqliteswift-with-sqlcipher (with version 0.15.5 instead of 0.15.6 in those documents) to create the wrapper package and then consuming that in your own application?

I'd recommend trying the wrapper package example referenced there with a vanilla project to confirm you can integrate that properly (and output a cipherVersion), then slowly add in your other dependencies to try to isolate what could be causing the issue.

If you're able to share an example project that not's working publicly (i.e. on GitHub), I can also take a look to see if I can spot the issue.

[jcmanke]

Yes, we have a local package wrapper for our dependencies.

I tried creating a reproduction project locally and found a potentially related issue, I can't even resolve the SQLCipher dependency through the trait without explicitly adding the SQLCipher dependency separately.

mankej2@MANKEJ2-M490NKQ2F0 SQLiteSQLCipherRepro % swift package resolve --package-path MyLibrary
Fetching https://github.com/stephencelis/SQLite.swift.git from cache
Fetched https://github.com/stephencelis/SQLite.swift.git from cache (0.33s)
Computing version for https://github.com/stephencelis/SQLite.swift.git
Computed https://github.com/stephencelis/SQLite.swift.git at 0.15.5 (0.93s)
Creating working copy for https://github.com/stephencelis/SQLite.swift.git
Working copy of https://github.com/stephencelis/SQLite.swift.git resolved at 0.15.5
error: exhausted attempts to resolve the dependencies graph, with the following dependencies unresolved:
* 'sqlcipher.swift' from https://github.com/sqlcipher/SQLCipher.swift

However, through this otherwise clean reproduction project, the cipherVersion and key commands succeed.

SQLiteSQLCipherRepro.zip

[R4N]

@jcmanke

I just tested out your sample project with Xcode 26.3, removing the extra explicit dependency on SQLCipher and it worked properly and output the correct cipherVersion.

There is a bug in previous swift tools versions which didn't allow from to work for resolving dependencies when using traits that in Package.swift which seems like it might be what's happening here for you: apple/swift-configuration#89

That issue links over to this pull request: swiftlang/swift-package-manager#9269

Could you try removing the explicit dependency on SQLCipher and use the revision (instead of from) for the SQLite.swift package, so your dependencies block would look as follows:

    dependencies: [
        .package(
            url: "https://github.com/stephencelis/SQLite.swift",
            revision: "0c08856385fe24f7b76d8c51842d78a196e8e817",
            traits: ["SQLCipher"]
        )
    ],

[jcmanke]

Update: Reviewed our other dependencies in the actual app and saw that Airship includes this in its own Package.swift file:

linkerSettings: [
    //Libraries
    .linkedLibrary("sqlite3"),
]

Added this dependency to the repro project and reproduced the original issue. The attached .zip does not include your recommended fix the the SQLCipher dependency resolution but it did appear to work locally.

SQLiteSQLCipherRepro 2.zip

[R4N]

Yes, that does look like the culprit of why you were getting the original error as that Airship package is linking the standard sqlite3 library which conflicts with SQLCipher.

Add this linkerSetting to your MyLibrary target to ensure that SQLCipher framework is properly linked first:

            linkerSettings: [
                .linkedFramework("SQLCipher"),
            ]

[jcmanke]

Confirmed that adding the linkerSettings for SQLCipher resolves this issue.