Swift could've easily replaced python.
but the language got complex and is now a baby C++.
Swift Static Linux SDK
91–100 of 274 posts
Re: Swift Static Linux SDK
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the disaster that's python package management, that's not where you want to end up The one where the only sane option is using distribution packages or conda and ignoring anything that the python community comes up with?
I had my Python and pip installed from distribution packages. One day I needed to build something from source, but it needed Meson... Ok installed Meson also from my distro packages! But no, the project required a newer Meson version. Ok let's install Meson with pip! But no, it turns out pip packages themselves can require a minimum pip version !! Go figure. So I couldn't build that program without first pip-installi…
Were you using a virtualenv? Or were you pip installing into your distro / system python, like a true savage?
Re: Swift Static Linux SDK
#93This static SDK is just one example of Swift's new support for user-definable platforms, timed to amplify support for embedded and WASM. Along with the move to a non-Apple GitHub organisation, it represents real progress in extending swift to other platforms. It would be interesting to see if this is used for the AI OS that they are inviting researchers to validate for security purposes.
Wow, I had no idea people were using Swift for Embedded: https://github.com/apple/swift-embedded-examples
Re: Swift Static Linux SDK
#94Swift 6 is amazing - I say this as a big Rust person. It seems like Swift is now its own entity outside the Apple bubble and has a few very interesting features: - An "embedded" mode that turns off reflection for kilobyte-sized binaries - An upcoming WASM target - An LSP for VSCode - Native C++ interop - Typed "throws" - Static linking on linux and the linux sdk - Porting a number of "core foundation" / foundation pr…
> No garbage collector
No tracing gc. Ref counting is the other kind of garbage collector.
Re: Swift Static Linux SDK
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed that Swift looks quite amazing. There’s some cool talks on how they’re trying to move FoundationDB to Swift and their approach. I think the main problem, and this is a really big problem, is that based on a very shallow investigation I did a couple months back, the ecosystem for server-side stuff barely exists. And in my opinion, the ecosystem is one of the deciding factors when picking a language.
I have a slight inkling that Apple internally is using Swift for backend stuff somewhere, especially with all the ML stuff they just shipped. Word on the street is their datacenters are full of M-series chips. I could see those servers running Swift + distributed actors + mlx. The move to make swift run on Linux could be part of that work - their sysadmins, devops, and backend folks probably use Vim/VSCode and deploy…
Apple deploys a ton of their server stuff on Linux. Plus they appear to be doing all new code in Swift and moving old code over slowly.
They’re also using embedded Swift in the Secure Enclaves and other small processors due to its safety, though I think they have an extra layer of automated security checking that they use internally that doesn’t exist in the public builds.
But in short, yes. I believe they’re trying to use Swift for everything at this point and getting away from C/C++/whatever even for kernel work.
Re: Swift Static Linux SDK
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the disaster that's python package management, that's not where you want to end up The one where the only sane option is using distribution packages or conda and ignoring anything that the python community comes up with?
Have you tried "poetry"?
Yes. Having tried it led me to write that comment.
Re: Swift Static Linux SDK
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It would make this sort of vulnerability scanning much easier to do. Scanning, sure. Fixing... surely much harder than with shared libraries.
Only because the build tooling is less mature. It should be pretty easy to programmatically update a lock file, run the tests, and rebuild a package. For rust crates that are compiled and packaged straight from git, you could probably automate that today.
> It should be pretty easy to programmatically update a lock file, run the tests, and rebuild a package.
You still fundamentally need to rebuild (or at least relink) and re-distribute all the packages, whereas with shared libraries... well you just update that one package.
Re: Swift Static Linux SDK
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
How’s the compilation speed?If it’s going to replace Go, that’s gotta be sub second for a medium sized project on my clunky old laptop.
Assuming my experience with Swift 5 is still accurate, compilation speed is at least an order of magnitude slower than Go. It’s a much more powerful language. In my opinion slower compilation is worth it for all of its great features. (Does Go even have parametric enums?). But its definitely a trade off.
That’s the one big loss from moving off Objective-C. Because the language was so stupidly simple to parse and didn’t have a lot of “we’ll figure that out for you from what you wrote” it could be compiled incredibly quick on today’s machines.
I know they’re working on improving it. I’m glad they are. But that speed is something I definitely miss.
Re: Swift Static Linux SDK
#99Swift 6 is amazing - I say this as a big Rust person. It seems like Swift is now its own entity outside the Apple bubble and has a few very interesting features: - An "embedded" mode that turns off reflection for kilobyte-sized binaries - An upcoming WASM target - An LSP for VSCode - Native C++ interop - Typed "throws" - Static linking on linux and the linux sdk - Porting a number of "core foundation" / foundation pr…
Algebraic data types are not a Rust invention and aren't exclusive to that language.
I don’t think they were trying to claim that, just that it was a feature that was in Rust that they liked and wanted to keep using.
Just like Rust didn’t invent not using garbage collection.
Re: Swift Static Linux SDK
#100Swift 6 is amazing - I say this as a big Rust person. It seems like Swift is now its own entity outside the Apple bubble and has a few very interesting features: - An "embedded" mode that turns off reflection for kilobyte-sized binaries - An upcoming WASM target - An LSP for VSCode - Native C++ interop - Typed "throws" - Static linking on linux and the linux sdk - Porting a number of "core foundation" / foundation pr…
I'm primarily a C++ developer these days, and if the C++ interop is actually good then I'm very excited for the future. For app-dev type stuff it really does seem like it's better than Rust, and I can definitely see a world where we start migrating some code into Swift. Edit: back from watching the video, and a few observations: - Swift does not suffer from Rust's refusal to add things into the standard library. gasp…
Apple is using it for some low-level stuff and they appear to be trying to improve that every year.
I think they want to be able to use a limited subset of it in their kernel. Actually I think they already are but I’m not positive.
Obviously it started as an application level language but I do think they’re trying to move it down the stack as well.