Running a Swift Command Line Application's Executable Target on Linux

Using Swift
1

I have made a command line application in Swift. When I run the executable product it produces on my Mac, everything is fine and it works as expected. But when I copy the executable over to my Linux machine, it doesn't work and produces the following error:

-sh: ./script: cannot execute binary file: Exec format error

I assume that this is because Linux and MacOS use different executable file formats. With this in mind, I was wondering if it is possible to build the executable product in a format that will be able to run on my Linux machine, but I haven't been able to find any straightforward way to do this in Xcode thus far. Another option might be to convert the executable file to a supported format but I'm not sure if that is something that one can do either.

Here are the details on my Linux machine:

  Operating System: FSLC Wayland 3.1 (dunfell)
            Kernel: Linux 5.4.85+gedb81d8afdfe
      Architecture: arm64

How can I fix this to get the executable running on my Linux machine?

2

The simple answer is you can't move binaries between O/S architectures (Linux uses ELF formatted binaries, Darwin/MacOSX uses Mach-O formats, libraries are different, O/S primitive calls are different, etc.). Xcode only builds for Darwin based O/Ss (macOS, iOS, iPadOS, tvOS, watchOS).

Take the source code, compile and link on the Linux system.

3

Is your Mac an M1 Mac? The only Mac that supports arm64 is the M1 Mac, everything else is an x86_64 machine. That right there is a fundamental difference if you are not using an M1 Mac. They use radically different instruction sets.

4

I have access to both an M1 Mac and an Intel based Mac. Unfortunately the running the executable product compiled on either of the Macs on my Linux machine fails.

5

Do you know if the linux machine I have supports Swift by any chance?

6

To be expected, as I talked about above.

7

Not sure what "FSLC" means with regard to identifying a LInux variant. If you lookup something like "Swift Linux arm64" you'll find a variety of sources for arm64 versions of Swift. You'll have to look at the operating systems they delineate (CentOS, Ubuntu, Amazon Linux 2, Android (considered a Linux), Raspberry Pi, etc.) to see if there is a close enough match to your setup.

8

I just want to add that you don't need to compile on that particular Linux machine of yours. You could also compile within a Linux Docker container on your Macs that fit the right architecture -- arm64 in your case. This would be an option if you can't find a Swift version for your particular Linux distribution.

Once the static Linux version (for arm64) is build, you can just copy it to your FSLC Wayland system (which I also don't know what it means). If you build the executable with dynamic linking, then you must also have the Swift libraries installed on your target system.

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