Apple Open Sources Swift, Loosens Grip On Interactive Programming Language

Apple’s interactive programming language,

Swift, has been made into an open source platform. The open source Swift Project, which launched today, announced that it is excited to work with the community to add enhancements, find and fix bugs, and introduce Swift to platforms beyond those using iOS, OSX and WatchOS.

Swift comprises a number of components. The Swift compiler project interprets Swift syntax, there's the LLDB project debugger, and the Swift standard library project includes everything you need to write code in Swift. Together, these components provide a complete ecosystem for developing software.

Now that Swift is an open source language, two additional projects have been released. The Swift Package Manager is being designed to help build and share Swift open source code rather than pre-compiled binary libraries. The Swift team said this project is in early development and will be designed and created using an open, collaborative process. The Swift team said an example of package repositories can be found at the Apple Github page.

The Swift core libraries have also been released. Swift said these are higher-level APIs than the standard Swift library that offer functionality such as localization, unit testing and user preferences. Swift said the core libraries are based on Foundation, libdispath and XCTEST frameworks and are designed to make it simple to use the same code across multiple platforms.

Swift has been used to introduce students to modern programming, and the Swift team believes that these skills will be of better use now that the language is open source. It will open up Swift-based applications to a wider range of devices and platforms.

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