Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apple is open sourcing Swift Build

swift.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 300 posts

Re: Apple is open sourcing Swift Build

#41

Post by tempodox »

tux3 wrote: post #4

The goal for Swift should (and seems) to be to gradually separate itself from XCode, which is holding it back from its ambitions. XCode has been compared to many things, but at 3.1 stars on the App store, one must find that it is still slightly overrated.

I feel like Swift is being held hostage by Apple. I can't get get the next version of Swift, because it's being distributed with a higher version of Xcode that only runs on an OS version I don't want to install (yet), and even if I did, I'd first have to buy a new Mac for that. That trick seems to work with enough developers to make Apple ever more rich and powerful and even more arrogant (if that's possible at all), but it doesn't work with me. As much as I appreciate Swift, I will only ever use it on my terms, not on Apple's.

Re: Apple is open sourcing Swift Build

#42

Post by VWWHFSfQ »

uhura wrote: post #36

I believe that this long game of Swift being "good for everything" but "better for Apple platforms" will be detrimental to the language. This does not help the language nor seems to bring more people to the ecosystem. Competitors seems to have a combination of: - Being more open-source - Have more contributors - Have a narrower scope Maybe they should consider open sourcing all the tooling (like Xcode) otherwise the…

I doubt Apple really cares much about competing with other languages, tooling, or platforms when it comes to Swift or Xcode. They have a completely captured audience and ecosystem, and anything beyond that isn’t even a "best effort" — it's more like, "You're welcome to see if it works for you, but don’t bother us if it doesn't."

Re: Apple is open sourcing Swift Build

#43

Post by st3fan »

isodev wrote: post #23
picafrost wrote: post #9

Swift is a nice language. I'm glad to see it being released from the clutches of Apple. I can only imagine how large of a task this is. I hope some day to be able to use it. The last time I tried a cross-platform project with it I switched languages due to `URLSession.shared.data` (a network request) being unable to compile on Linux.

Is it really being released? Although some parts of the language and build chains are technically open source (as in, you can see the code), the project is still completely controlled by Apple at the top.

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 of the project, the core team or leads or module owners, will either tell you that your proposal or code change is not appropriate or compatible with the project's goals or they will help you to merge it. That is exactly the same for Swift.

Why is Apple suddenly a dictator while every other project also has an agenda and strict rules that are being enforced?

Is the expectation to just be able to do whatever you want in a project like Swift?

Re: Apple is open sourcing Swift Build

#44

Post by eastbound »

uhura wrote: post #36

I believe that this long game of Swift being "good for everything" but "better for Apple platforms" will be detrimental to the language. This does not help the language nor seems to bring more people to the ecosystem. Competitors seems to have a combination of: - Being more open-source - Have more contributors - Have a narrower scope Maybe they should consider open sourcing all the tooling (like Xcode) otherwise the…

The goal is probably rather to allow CI on the cloud. Many companies are ok with open source licenses.

Re: Apple is open sourcing Swift Build

#45

Post by [deleted] »

cvwright wrote: post #25
isodev wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really being released? Although some parts of the language and build chains are technically open source (as in, you can see the code), the project is still completely controlled by Apple at the top.

They have also been working on a completely open source version of the Foundation library for use on Linux and other platforms. (IIRC the URLSession type is part of Foundation, as are many core building blocks that you need for making a real application.)

[deleted]

Re: Apple is open sourcing Swift Build

#46

Post by JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B »

uhura wrote: post #36

I believe that this long game of Swift being "good for everything" but "better for Apple platforms" will be detrimental to the language. This does not help the language nor seems to bring more people to the ecosystem. Competitors seems to have a combination of: - Being more open-source - Have more contributors - Have a narrower scope Maybe they should consider open sourcing all the tooling (like Xcode) otherwise the…

This has been my experience for a long time. Swift is nice but why would I waste my time working on a language that is too tied to the Apple platform even if it's open-source when we have more universal scripting languages like Python, or languages like Kotlin that are compiled but have more support (because I trust JetBrains way more than Apple at the moment), or languages that are most strict like Rust but have more momentum and safety?

They painted themselves in a corner. Apple being the best computing platform while trying to please everyone can never be a serious proposition. Either they are the best and everyone uses macOS, or we have to be so careful that any alternative is more interesting that what they propose.

Re: Apple is open sourcing Swift Build

#47

Post by st3fan »

VWWHFSfQ wrote: post #42
uhura wrote: post #36

I believe that this long game of Swift being "good for everything" but "better for Apple platforms" will be detrimental to the language. This does not help the language nor seems to bring more people to the ecosystem. Competitors seems to have a combination of: - Being more open-source - Have more contributors - Have a narrower scope Maybe they should consider open sourcing all the tooling (like Xcode) otherwise the…

I doubt Apple really cares much about competing with other languages, tooling, or platforms when it comes to Swift or Xcode. They have a completely captured audience and ecosystem, and anything beyond that isn’t even a "best effort" — it's more like, "You're welcome to see if it works for you, but don’t bother us if it doesn't."

I don't know about Xcode, but Swift is open source with an active community so if it doesn't work for you then you can definitely bother the Swift Open-Source project with a pull request or a proposal for a language or tooling improvement. You can also have a discussion on the forums or in the bug tracker with fellow contributors.

You can also make the change in your own fork and use that.

This is exactly how for example the Rust or Python open source projects work. And like those projects you can look at the Swift proposals and code to see _numerous_ cases where people did bother to bother the team with change requests or directly contributed to those improvements.

It is all open source. Check it out.

Re: Apple is open sourcing Swift Build

#48

Post by diggan »

tempodox wrote: post #41
tux3 wrote: post #4

The goal for Swift should (and seems) to be to gradually separate itself from XCode, which is holding it back from its ambitions. XCode has been compared to many things, but at 3.1 stars on the App store, one must find that it is still slightly overrated.

I feel like Swift is being held hostage by Apple. I can't get get the next version of Swift, because it's being distributed with a higher version of Xcode that only runs on an OS version I don't want to install (yet), and even if I did, I'd first have to buy a new Mac for that. That trick seems to work with enough developers to make Apple ever more rich and powerful and even more arrogant (if that's possible at all),…

> As much as I appreciate Swift, I will only ever use it on my terms, not on Apple's.

Apple's ethos for a long time have been "On our terms only", for almost everything they've built. Why would they treat Swift any differently?

Re: Apple is open sourcing Swift Build

#49

Post by iamkonstantin »

st3fan wrote: post #43
isodev wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really being released? Although some parts of the language and build chains are technically open source (as in, you can see the code), the project is still completely controlled by Apple at the top.

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.

Re: Apple is open sourcing Swift Build

#50

Post by declan_roberts »

tempodox wrote: post #41
tux3 wrote: post #4

The goal for Swift should (and seems) to be to gradually separate itself from XCode, which is holding it back from its ambitions. XCode has been compared to many things, but at 3.1 stars on the App store, one must find that it is still slightly overrated.

I feel like Swift is being held hostage by Apple. I can't get get the next version of Swift, because it's being distributed with a higher version of Xcode that only runs on an OS version I don't want to install (yet), and even if I did, I'd first have to buy a new Mac for that. That trick seems to work with enough developers to make Apple ever more rich and powerful and even more arrogant (if that's possible at all),…

While i am sympathetic to you, you have to see that you represent a vanishing small use case for them.
Post reply on HN