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Apple is open sourcing Swift Build

swift.org

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Re: Apple is open sourcing Swift Build

#161

Post by tombert »

gruuuk wrote: post #157
jitl wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get this reaction. Apple: here, we're open-sourcing this previously closed-source Apple-specific thing that made Swift better on Apple platforms. We're moving the Apple stuff into a plugin so Windows and Linux can be equal peers to Apple in the new system. We've implemented preliminary support for Windows & Linux and plan to continue work to bring them up to parity. Hacker News: I believe that this long game…

They should have been fully open source with full linux support and parity since day one. That would actually help the language get traction. At this point it's a dying language.

Is it dying? I think it's still pretty popular for app development isn't it?

I was pretty excited to hear that Ladybird is doing a lot of stuff in Swift, because I think it's a pretty decent and fast language and I think it'd be pretty neat to see a browser written in it.

Re: Apple is open sourcing Swift Build

#162

Post by qaq »

makeitdouble wrote: post #150
thih9 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why would I waste my time working on a language that is too tied to the Apple platform This might work the other way round: starting from people familiar with macos or ios development who want to write for other platforms. Then the question becomes: why would a developer learn a different open source language when they can use what they already know. And sure, depending on the context they might still go with Pytho…

That crowd has the disadvantage of not being primarily interested in the other platforms, so they won't be much invested in optimizing or better matching the target capabilities. That's the same dynamic as web devs writing React Native apps: you won't expect them to contribute extensions that manipulate local apfs metadata for instance. So while it's nice to have them use the tools, you still need people who primaril…

Hmm Snowflake and Apple are rewriting FoundationDB in Swift. Swift has pretty good dev. ergonomics and good interop with C/C++ so it might find it's niche outside of Apple.

Re: Apple is open sourcing Swift Build

#163

Post by qaq »

iamkonstantin wrote: post #49
st3fan wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are wrong about "some parts" - you can browse github.com/swiftlang to find out. About control - serious question: how is this different from for example Rust, Go, Zig or Python? For each of those you can submit a change proposal through an official process and you can submit code changes through a pull request. But also for each of those there is a non-zero chance that a smaller group of people who do governance…

> how is this different from for example Rust, Go, Zig or Python I believe op means Swift is different because Apple is the gatekeeper at the top of the Swift project https://www.swift.org/community/#project-lead By contrast, other open languages usually have elected leadership and aren’t directly subject to a specific corporation.

Go is pretty much controlled by Google I don't follow it closely but there was a ton of drama around AWS influence on Rust through hiring key Rust devs. Zig has BDFL Python had BDFL

Re: Apple is open sourcing Swift Build

#165

Post by neonsunset »

benbristow wrote: post #159
aryonoco wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand what "broken away a bit" means. We use C#/.Net pretty much exclusively to build the backend of our web apps). Most of the devs use Mac, with some Linux. Everything is run in Kubernetes (OpenShift). we use JetBrains Rider as our IDE. C# is a very nice, very performant (faster than Go) language, the platform is mature and robust. the tooling is excellent. It gives you good garbage collection, strong…

If you want to use Visual Studio Code the 'DevKit' extension which provides essential features (language server) is proprietary and requires a Visual Studio licence regardless of platform. Also I find since C# is an 'enterprise' language developers take the p--s in what they want to charge for, as enterprise will pay as a 'cost of doing business'. Recently FluentAssertions, a freakin test assertion library decided th…

DevKit is completely optional.

The language server is part of the SDK itself. The language server integration, debugger and all the features that make VS Code a good tool to write C# in are a part of base C# extension which is MIT-licensed and has no commercial restrictions whatsoever.

The only "wart" is that "vsdbg" - debugger it ships with is closed-source because it is essentially the same debugger as in Visual Studio but extracted into a standalone cross-platform component. There is an open alternative "NetCoreDbg" used by the extension fork for VSCodium (and various DAP bridges to Neovim, Emacs, etc.).

Re: Apple is open sourcing Swift Build

#166

Post by myko »

layer8 wrote: post #12

> a foundational step in this new chapter of Swift build technologies The corporate language throughout that post is pretty cringe. It seems so unnecessary.

It is so Apple, though. I can hear Craig's inflection just reading the sentence.

Re: Apple is open sourcing Swift Build

#167

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

gruuuk wrote: post #157
jitl wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get this reaction. Apple: here, we're open-sourcing this previously closed-source Apple-specific thing that made Swift better on Apple platforms. We're moving the Apple stuff into a plugin so Windows and Linux can be equal peers to Apple in the new system. We've implemented preliminary support for Windows & Linux and plan to continue work to bring them up to parity. Hacker News: I believe that this long game…

They should have been fully open source with full linux support and parity since day one. That would actually help the language get traction. At this point it's a dying language.

> At this point it's a dying language.

I disagree.

Source: Someone who has been programming Apple since 1986, and has heard last rites being administered to Apple, many times.

Re: Apple is open sourcing Swift Build

#169

Post by cosmic_cheese »

bartekpacia wrote: post #158
cosmic_cheese wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have heard of it, haven’t investigated it deeply. Looks to still have some of the less-great points of the Java ecosystem on the build side of things (gradle) which is a detractor for me. Kotlin’s syntax is also weird/quirky in some ways.

> Kotlin’s syntax is also weird/quirky in some ways. I'm curious to learn what you mean by this! :)

No terenary if and the elvis operator, for one. Stuff like that trips me up frequently when jumping between Kotlin and Swift/other C-likes.

Re: Apple is open sourcing Swift Build

#170

Post by lawgimenez »

gruuuk wrote: post #157
jitl wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get this reaction. Apple: here, we're open-sourcing this previously closed-source Apple-specific thing that made Swift better on Apple platforms. We're moving the Apple stuff into a plugin so Windows and Linux can be equal peers to Apple in the new system. We've implemented preliminary support for Windows & Linux and plan to continue work to bring them up to parity. Hacker News: I believe that this long game…

They should have been fully open source with full linux support and parity since day one. That would actually help the language get traction. At this point it's a dying language.

Come on now, iOS development is my livelihood.
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