We welcome our new open source overlords. The site is pretty overwhelmed right now but I’m updating this post as I manage to get through to each page.
Big congrats to the entire Swift team for making this happen!
What does this mean for your Swift Developer’s Cookbook?
Surprisingly little. We already planned the update into the production (that’s the Content Update Program you may have been wondering about), and I’m currently working on revisions. I know — book not even published yet and I’m already revising but this is the reality and the only way I could see to get a book about Swift happening.
Plus, all the chapters are targeted at language concepts. I’m thinking that it will hold up remarkably well, even with the new Swift 2.2 and announced Swift 3.0 language changes.
- Amazon
- B&N
- InformIT
- Safari Books Online Rough Cuts (prerelease)
And those cool draft API design guidelines?
I’m updating my Swift Structured Documentation ebook as we speak. The Swift team’s guidelines are here. There’s a lot of overlap with what’s already in the book but I’m bringing in the new material. Look for an update in iBooks over the next few days.
“Hey, I’m on Linux!”
Glad to have you join our community. Consider stopping by irc.freenode.net and joining #swift-lang. Readme is here.
What’s there to know?
Open-source Swift targets iOS, OS X, watchOS, tvOS, and can be used on Linux to build Swift libraries and apps. Swift core libraries in the release include Stdlib (common types including data, URLs, character sets, collections), unit tests, networking primitives, threading, persistence, JSON/XML/plists, OS-specific abstracted behavior, file system access, internationalization, and user prefs.
- Swift is licensed under Apache v 2.0 with Runtime Library Exception.
- The REPL has a new integrated debugger, making it possible to set breakpoints, call functions, recover from failure, etc.
- The team will post updates on the Swift.org blog.
Swift 2.2
OS X Swift 2.2 Snapshot Package available here. This installs a toolchain to /Library/Developer/Toolchains/ on OS X. This includes a copy of the compiler, lldb, and related tools that are newer (and presumably less stable/production ready) than the ones in the Xcode 7.x beta.
Programming reference available here. (Under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License.)
What’s this about Swift 3?
The open source version of Swift offers a taste of where Swift 3 is going but does not yet provide tools. You can join various Swift Mailing List to receive updates on the process. (The number of listservs is extensive, from evolution announcements to general dev to compiler/source kit evolution.)
Swift 3 will offer a language migrator and should check for common design pattern mismatches, although the website is quite sparse on details about this feature.
What’s going to happen to the standard library in Swift 3?
It’s getting fully audited and updated so expect a lot of name and structural changes to match the ideals set forth in the Swift API Design Guidelines. That said, the fundamental language concepts should remain secure.
The page with details is currently not pushed to github but keep checking this link. (Update: It’s live!)
Github! and Bug reports
Apple’s github account exists but does not yet seem to have gone fully live with content.
Swift’s new open source project uses Jira for tracking bugs. The team requests that playground specific bugs go through Apple’s normal bug reporter system.
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