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Swift is Open Source

swift.org

301–310 of 458 posts

Re: Swift is Open Source

#301
post #65

I wonder if Apple is positionning it as a competitor to Google's Go? They are hinting at a usage beyond just iOS and OS X.

I would think Google should be more worried than Apple at this point, since Swift works on iOS but Go support in Android is second-class. In fact, there are significant efforts to run Swift on Android which places it at least on par with Go there (and, obviously, ahead on iOS).

Re: Swift is Open Source

#302

If you're new to Swift, I maintain a list of blogs, etc about Swift. I just past 2500 urls: http://www.h4labs.com/dev/ios/swift.html It can be viewed daily or weekly, if you're only interest in recent blogs: http://www.h4labs.com/dev/ios/swift.html?date=0 http://www.h4labs.com/dev/ios/swift.html?week=0 Finally, all the data is on Github: https://github.com/melling/SwiftResources

Are there really 2500 blogs about Swift? Did you mean blog posts instead (I'd find that more believable)?

Yes, blog posts and github repos, for example.

Re: Swift is Open Source

#303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What it means from a legal standpoint is that Apple is bound by the same terms as everybody else. The way it works is this: Apple is making Swift available to you (and others) under Apache 2.0. You send in some changes, which you make available to Apple (and others) under Apache 2.0. Everyone is on equal footing, and Apple can't relicense it to someone else on terms of their choosing that involve, for example, neuter…

That ridiculous: "started cargo-culting the(totally unnecessary) CLA process" It's so they can re-license in the future. There are some projects with so many authors that it is impossible to re-license because you need sign-off by every single person, even if it makes sense to re-license.

From a contributer's point of view, the inability to re-license practically is often a feature, not a bug. CLAs make the worst case scenario touted by GPL advocates about non-GPL licenses practical: They can profit directly and exclusively from your work without your direct consent.

Re: Swift is Open Source

#304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what way does Go scale badly from an engineering point of view?

It was our opinion that it's harder to write code that will be shared with a bigger team. Some of the factors were the simpler type system, lack of generics meant lots of copy and pasting of common patterns. The package system seemed less comprehensive and flexible in comparison to Java's. These are just subjective issues of course, but I think it's reaching a bit to say that Go and Swift are the best two languages y…

Not a go fan, but seems like if anyone has scale problems, google would, and go would give them these issues too which is surprising since that was kind of the goal to solve from their perspective.

Re: Swift is Open Source

#305
This is pretty awesome. If all of the platform dependencies could be abstracted away, this could form the core of yet another cross-mobile-platform development framework, but with better performance and richer tooling.

I think it really depends on how much control Apple intends to exercise over the IP. Could someone fork it and use it to create a mobile platform that would be free from legal harassment if it competed with the iPhone?

Re: Swift is Open Source

#306
post #288
post #112

Github repo is live now. https://github.com/apple/swift First ever commit found here https://github.com/apple/swift/commit/afc81c1855bf711315b8e5...

Lexer.cpp: int X; Interesting that they started with git, instead of even a very small section of working code first

I think it's because they need a repo before they can start collaborating, so it's best to set it up ASAP to allow people to start pushing code. In my opinion it also helps to set up the initial repo right away so you can benefit from version control features and be in the mindset of making proper commits instead of a huge initial commit that appears out of thin air.

Re: Swift is Open Source

#307
post #298

What means "swift is memory safe"? does it use a GC?

No, it uses "automatic reference counting"—it keeps a reference count of memory usage and frees it when it's no longer being referenced. And (for the most part) it automatically inserts the reference counting into your code during compilation. There are still some hints that you need to give it (like telling it about weak references to avoid reference loops, etc.)

Re: Swift is Open Source

#308
post #28

Wonders about the state of Swift on Linux? Was expecting this to be timed with the open source announcement.

"OS X, Ubuntu Linux LTS, and the latest Ubuntu Linux release are the current supported host development operating systems." (https://github.com/apple/swift/tree/master/apinotes)

Re: Swift is Open Source

#309

So does this mean we might finally get officially supported iOS development on Windows and/or Linux soon?

No. Swift the language is not to be confused with the iOS framework or tools. While more and more of iOS (and I presume XCode) is written in Swift, that all continues to be closed sourced code and is Mac specific.

Re: Swift is Open Source

#310
post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was our opinion that it's harder to write code that will be shared with a bigger team. Some of the factors were the simpler type system, lack of generics meant lots of copy and pasting of common patterns. The package system seemed less comprehensive and flexible in comparison to Java's. These are just subjective issues of course, but I think it's reaching a bit to say that Go and Swift are the best two languages y…

Not a go fan, but seems like if anyone has scale problems, google would, and go would give them these issues too which is surprising since that was kind of the goal to solve from their perspective.

There's different definitions of scale. He is talking about from an engineering perspective and at Google we have seen nothing other than a few periphery sites being written in Go.

I fully agree that Go is a poor language if you are building a large, monolithic application.

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