The current state of Swift for Server and Linux

Evolution Discussion
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I think currently Swift really face some serious issues mentioned upthread, poor toolchain installation/update experience, slow progress of official support(if any) for third party IDE/tools, and lack of better open-source documentation in swift.org.

Some advices and thoughts listed below.

  • Swift.org official web site design need an overhaul, open source is a better option, but redesign is a must.

  • Swiftup project should be established ASAP, like

said; furthermore Apple should provide official Linux repos for swift-lang and windows packages through windows store/winget delivery. Swiftup should have stable/beta/dev channels like rustup and updates weekly or biweekly for community.

  • Much more investment and engagement for non-Apple developer tools such as vscode emacs vim.. and official extension like rust-analyzer is very welcome. Of course, if we can have a lightweight portable Xcode edition for Linux/Windows would be excellent, great language needs great IDE. (like C#, Java) - Microsoft already have VS for Mac :blush:

  • SwiftPM also needs better integration with Xcode and smooth cross-platform support, there're lo..ots of various swift package manager problems reported in this forum, that's NOT good. We need a cargo/crates.io similar wonderful experience, perhaps official swift.io registry is the fit target.

  • Swift.dev - an official swift playground web interface for swift compiler to experiment with the latest language. Or play.swift.org/dev.swift.org equivalents. Try https://play.rust-lang.org/

  • Besides that, does Apple have plan to make a Swift foundation like Rust Foundation from Mozilla and . NET Foundation from Microsoft? Swift foundation can help industry and community to better treat Swift a non-Apple driven language, more collaboration wider leadership involvement. See Rust core team update

Long story short, we know Apple and the core team are trying hard in making Swift, step by step.. but as for now, still not good enough to face the competitive challenge from other open source lang projects. Hurry up, fixing the piled problems, we need to change.

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