this was asked a year ago, but with zero response from anyone responsible for SwiftPM at the time.
what is the status of enabling dependencies to be compiled with release optimizations, but compiling the client package in debug mode?
as is well known, using Swift libraries without Swift compiler optimizations is not really viable at all, and SwiftPM’s practice of compiling all targets in the same optimization level means that -c debug is unusable in many real world projects that make heavy use of Swift libraries.
i’ve noticed a worrying trend of Swift developers discarding Swift libraries entirely in favor of C libraries due to poor performance of Swift libraries in debug mode.
Not to hijack your thread, but I'd also be interested in a reply that addressed SPM evolution more broadly. Hardly a week goes by without me wondering if SE-0273 conditionals are ever going to be fully implemented for reasons that are somewhat intertwined with this question.
I’ve been heavily using, pushing and abusing SwiftPM ever since it was introduced and I feel like not much has been happening on that front lately.
I’d love to contribute this summer once my Uni session finishes, I wonder if I could get a mentorship on SwiftPM to just fix bugs, answer forum questions, revive and discuss previous pitches, finish partial implementations, write documentation, etc.
As of now the SwiftPM codebase is daunting, I’ve started trying to understand its internals and use that knowledge to make a small package manager for a mega-niche calculator SDK.
I really want to become a Swift contributor after Uni!