Apple is open sourcing Swift Build • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple is open sourcing Swift Build

#281

Post by caspper69 » Sun, Feb 02, 2025, 7:36 PM UTC

dcrazy wrote: post #124

caspper69 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rotor was BSD licensed, so I suppose if that’s your definition of a not very open license…

Was it originally BSD-licensed, or did it start out as the MS Public Source License or whatever it was called? We could go back and check on Codeplex… oh wait.

As a sibling poster updated it was some bastardized shared source license that never caught on.

Thank goodness MS got over their allergy to open source licenses, as they seem to prefer MIT nowadays for their releases.

My apologies for misremembering the details and being snarky. Humble pie eaten and enjoyed. :)

Re: Apple is open sourcing Swift Build

#282

Post by hu3 » Sun, Feb 02, 2025, 9:08 PM UTC

sbuk wrote: post #261

ustad wrote: post #258

Apple’s software decisions over the last 15 years have created significant friction for developers trying to build on their platforms. Apple’s approach to software development has felt like it’s prioritizing business interests over the ease and flexibility that developers need to build high-quality, useful software.

And yet there has been plenty of high-quality, useful software developed on Apple's platform over the last 15 years, and there continues to be.

...in spite of.

Re: Apple is open sourcing Swift Build

#283

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Feb 02, 2025, 9:52 PM UTC

aristofun wrote: post #273

fastball wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your wishlist seems midly contradictory. Why does Apple need to open-source XCode if they also provide support for 3rd party IDEs (which they already do, btw)? Also what do you not like about cocoapods for package management? Plenty of people make an incredible amount of money building apps in Swift, so your last sentence is just wrong.

Decent support for 3d party IDE would mean open sourcing all critical xcode parts that currently leave developers no choice. Cocoapods is too old and bad for modern era package management. It’s not made for swift also.

[deleted]

Re: Apple is open sourcing Swift Build

#284

Post by akmarinov » Sun, Feb 02, 2025, 9:53 PM UTC

aristofun wrote: post #273

fastball wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your wishlist seems midly contradictory. Why does Apple need to open-source XCode if they also provide support for 3rd party IDEs (which they already do, btw)? Also what do you not like about cocoapods for package management? Plenty of people make an incredible amount of money building apps in Swift, so your last sentence is just wrong.

Decent support for 3d party IDE would mean open sourcing all critical xcode parts that currently leave developers no choice. Cocoapods is too old and bad for modern era package management. It’s not made for swift also.

Swift Package Manager exists

Cocoapods has been end of life’d

Re: Apple is open sourcing Swift Build

#285

Post by Alifatisk » Sun, Feb 02, 2025, 10:04 PM UTC

easeout wrote: post #275

Alifatisk wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't Vapor discontinued or do I have a false memory now?

Kibana was discontinued, maybe you're thinking of that one?

Hmmm, I think it was this:

  IBM announced it was discontinuing its involvement in server-side Swift development, including Kitura

Yeah I just mixed up Kitura with Vapor.

Re: Apple is open sourcing Swift Build

#286

Post by pl4nty » Sun, Feb 02, 2025, 11:29 PM UTC

liontwist wrote: post #197

kelnos wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This feels similar to C# and Microsoft's other CLR/.NET languages. Sure, they've broken away a bit and aren't exclusively used to run things on MS platforms, but still. And Swift is even more tied to Apple, at least to my inexperienced eye. I'm not really an Apple person (Linux, Android), even though I once really enjoyed their hardware... Swift is so far down on my list of languages to look at that I probably will n…

.net core is one of the best ways to write linux backend applications.

this, because msft spent years and many $$$ to build an open-source ecosystem. apple hasn't done that yet, so I'm not sure why anyone would trust them

Re: Apple is open sourcing Swift Build

#287

Post by metaltyphoon » Mon, Feb 03, 2025, 12:20 AM UTC

saagarjha wrote: post #244

metaltyphoon wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Swift is getting out of hand after Chris left and Swift UI was introduced. The language has over 210 keywords… thats crazy

Keywords are a bad way to judge a language.

Not saying you are wrong but tell me why it would be a good idea to have hundreds of keywords for a programming language.

Re: Apple is open sourcing Swift Build

#288

Post by pmarreck » Mon, Feb 03, 2025, 12:47 AM UTC

zoot64 wrote: post #233

pmarreck wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Python is not compiled, it is interpreted, and it has many warts. Kotlin depends on the JVM and is also not compiled. Rust? Now you're talking. Except that it has warts, too.

Kotlin is compiled in the sense that it compiles down to bytecode read by the JVM. It's not machine code level but it is still compiled to a certain degree. And Kotlin can compile natively for multiple targets including macOS and iOS without need for the JVM. There's also WASM support too.

Did not know about non-JVM compilation. Does it include the JVM as part of the binary then? Links?

Re: Apple is open sourcing Swift Build

#289

Post by fastball » Mon, Feb 03, 2025, 12:49 AM UTC

saagarjha wrote: post #248

fastball wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I think there are definitely parts of the language design / language features that are going to contribute, but when you need to parse to IR and then compile that to machine code, it seems any features you add that are nice for the developer are going to doubly hurt compile times. You see the same with ARC in swift (or the borrow checker in Rust).

Parsing IR and lowering it is not the reason why compiling Swift is slow.

What is the reason Swift compile times are slow?

Re: Apple is open sourcing Swift Build

#290

Post by saagarjha » Mon, Feb 03, 2025, 2:12 AM UTC

metaltyphoon wrote: post #287

saagarjha wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keywords are a bad way to judge a language.

Not saying you are wrong but tell me why it would be a good idea to have hundreds of keywords for a programming language.

Because not having hundreds of keywords means that either you have some parts of the language that are "this has a special meaning please don't touch" (double underscores are good enough, right guys?) or "we reassigned 10 different things to the same keyword to keep the number low" (ahem, static).