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It's 2021 and Swift is still nowhere to be found in the repositories of any of the Linux distributions I usually use. It's a big PITA to install, with nothing c

It's 2021 and Swift is still nowhere to be found in the repositories of any of the Linux distributions I usually use. It's a big PITA to install, with nothing comparable to `rustup` or even truly universal prepackaged binaries - the official website only offers plain .tar.gzs for either Ubuntu LTS or CentOS, or source code. It's nowhere to be found on FreeBSD either, but there's a .exe for Windows. Until they expect a novice to download and unpack random archives and set up environments without any kind of support they really can't expect to get any kind of growth on Linux. There's definitely no shortage of new, interesting languages, and too often Swift's support for non-Apple platforms feels more like an afterthought than anything.

whatatita 6y ago
I would hapily give it a try with a `brew install swift` but any involved install process is off putting.
- NobodyNada 6y ago
  Homebrew requires the Xcode command-line tools, which includes the Swift toolchain. If you have `brew`, you already have Swift.
  - iddan 6y ago
    Brew exists for Linux too
    - jolux 6y ago
      It does, but I’m not quite sure why you’d use it instead of apt or dnf or pacman...
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - tgymnich 6y ago
        brew lets you install packages without root/sudo.
        heavyset_go 6y ago
        Linux distributions don't depend on running random code from GitHub repositories like Homebrew does, it has package repositories. If those package repositories are compromised, Homebrew isn't going to save you, because you won't be able to trust your system at all at that point. If you can't trust the software you're installing, it makes much more sense to run it in unprivileged containers or VMs than relying on account-level security. If a malicious package is distributed via Homebrew, it can still do a lot of damage running as your current user, as any data or resource accessible to your user can be exploited or exfiltrated. I tend to agree with what another HN member wrote about sudo/root and Homebrew: https://saagarjha.com/blog/2019/04/26/thoughts-on-macos-package-managers/#to-sudo-or-not-to-sudo https://saagarjha.com/blog/2019/04/26/thoughts-on-macos-pack...
        rsa25519 6y ago
        > Linux distributions don't depend on running random code from GitHub repositories like Homebrew does, it has package repositories. Is the Homebrew github repo not a package repository?
        heavyset_go 6y ago
        Anyone can upload a Homebrew formula to Github that installs a malicious binary via brew. Debian, for example, has trusted build systems that compile packages for their package repositories, and some packages already have reproducible builds[1]. Package repositories on Linux tend to provide the sources and binaries needed to install software. Homebrew just supplies formulas on GitHub, which only contain instructions on how to fetch and install externally hosted binaries, or instructions on how to fetch and install via externally hosted source code. [1] https://wiki.debian.org/ReproducibleBuilds https://wiki.debian.org/ReproducibleBuilds
        6y ago
    - alrs 6y ago
      if you're running brew on Linux, throw in the towel, it's over.
harikb 6y ago
+1. For non-apple usage, I would want to see lot more GitHub repos with open source support for Swift. Right now even Kotlin/Rust and others beat Swift in that respect. I really like the language, but I don’t know what is holding it back. I wish it solved concurrency without async/await keywords - that would have been a killer feature to compete with Go
- saghm 6y ago
  > I really like the language, but I don’t know what is holding it back From my limited outsider perspective, it seems like Apple's unwillingness to go out of their way to support Linux is what's holding it back. There seem to be a large number of people interested in using Swift on the server, but without first-party support, Swift on Linux will always be playing catch up, as new features will always land on MacOS first and often not be designed with any regard to how they'll work on Linux.
pjmlp 6y ago
Just like Objective-C, it is a language for Apple platforms and that is about it. Try to use GNUStep to see how much an Apple language has managed to thrive outside of the ecosystem.
- slezyr 6y ago
  I'm not sure that you can call this "thrive" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Software_that_uses_GNUstep https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Software_that_uses_GN...
  - codetrotter 6y ago
    That’s what they are saying, it’s not thriving.
- Apocryphon 6y ago
  Objective-C at least has Oolite as a cross-platform killer app to show off.
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    So much that I had to search for it.
- raydev 6y ago
  Did Apple ever support GNUStep or make an attempt for ObjC to work on Linux in this millenium? Because they do have people focused on maintaining Swift support for Linux. So it's a bit different.
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    I wonder what those people do all day, when they just Java and Go on server side, as per job offers. When compared with Oracle, IBM, Microsoft and Google efforts for Linux support for their ecosystems, I really cannot see they work at all, given their output in the last five years.
xbar 6y ago
I had similar troubles trying to find the Swift ecosystem. The author's opening statement that Swift is everywhere rang hollow, even if it might be technically not strictly false when viewed from a certain angle under the right lighting conditions. So, I'm playing with Rust.
- skohan 6y ago
  Same. I love programming in Swift, but deploying it is a PITA. I got tired of waiting around for the cross-platform story to improve, so I moved on to Rust. It's refreshing to use tools which feel like they're made by someone who actually wants you to use them.
heavyset_go 6y ago
Swift had a chance 6-7 years ago when it first came out to capture mindshare on platforms other than iOS and macOS, but that chance was squandered. There's absolutely no reason someone would choose Swift over even .NET Core on other platforms these days. Thankfully, other languages have excelled during that timeframe.
- blario 6y ago
  [deleted]
  - cygx 6y ago
    Wikipedia disagrees: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_(programming_language)#Version_history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_(programming_language)#V...
eecc 6y ago
To be fair, the instructions on https://swift.org/download/#using-downloads https://swift.org/download/#using-downloads are fairly straightforward and copy-pastable. Indeed the prominence given to pgp signature verification is a breath of fresh air compared to the current wave of pipe-shell intros: it's not gatekeeping to ask a would-be programmer to exercise some reading skills and internalize the idea of signature verification. :)
- iudqnolq 6y ago
  What's the point of signature verification if you get the signature and the binary from the same server? I appreciate the lack of pretenses of `curl | sudo bash`.
  - eecc 6y ago
    Well, an attacker would need to first steal the private keys before they could generate the forged signatures. So, while you could still change the public keys in the instructions and trick first-comers to install a back-doored archive, you'd still be caught in a heartbeat by everyone else who already trusted the legitimate keys (which are published via a keyserver.) The chances and rewards of a successful, long-lasting attack are pretty slim, especially compared to those against other curl-bang installers (brew, oh-my-zsh...)
- GoOnThenDoTell 6y ago
  It kinda implies that no one writes Unix tools in swift, otherwise it would already be packaged in the disto of your choice
  - Redoubts 6y ago
    Yeah though I can see people not wanting to deploy a fat runtime just to run some cli tools.
- herbst 6y ago
  Being able to install something is only half of the issue. I wouldnt touch a language for production where i have to setup my environment myself completely without package control.
H_L 6y ago
Swift is absolutely an afterthought on non-Apple platforms. Apple doesn't even provide ARM slices for the official Swift Docker images (https://hub.docker.com/_/swift?tab=tags https://hub.docker.com/_/swift?tab=tags) which makes server-side development on their own cutting-edge M1 (ARM) machines basically impossible.
_-david-_ 6y ago
I am not sure which distros you use, but Swift is available in Fedora and EPEL (CentOS/RHEL) 8. The package name is swift-lang.
- WesolyKubeczek 6y ago
  I can’t understand why you’re being downvoted. Unless, of course, the HN crowd doesn’t like anyone putting spikes into myths it likes to perpetuate, like “installing Swift is involved on Linux”. Hello, it’s “dnf install -y swift-lang”, how less involved does it have to get? “Burn the heretic! It’s involved! I’d rather curl | sudo bash things all day!”
  - thegeekpirate 6y ago
    > WesolyKubeczek > I can’t understand why you’re being downvoted. Unless, of course, the HN crowd doesn’t like anyone putting spikes into myths it likes to perpetuate, like “installing Swift is involved on Linux”. > Hello, it’s “dnf install -y swift-lang”, how less involved does it have to get? > “Burn the heretic! It’s involved! I’d rather curl | sudo bash things all day!” It seems like it's _officially_ packaged on only two distros which are relevant to Linux developers—Fedora, and NixOS https://repology.org/project/swift-lang/versions https://repology.org/project/swift-lang/versions It's also _unofficially_ packaged (aka by the community) for Arch via AUR, Slackware via SlackBuilds, and RHEL/CentOS via EPEL. That's beyond pathetic, without even beginning to consider the resources of the company which backs them. Take a look at how many distros Zig supports, for instance https://repology.org/project/zig/versions https://repology.org/project/zig/versions ... ...and Swift released the open-sourced Linux version roughly six years ago.
- teh_klev 6y ago
  The problem with EPEL is that it's not supported by Redhat, and the packages that reside there are, for want of a better phrase, ephemeral. There are no guarantees. If you're after a long term and well supported solution then EPEL probably isn't for you. And the same goes for Fedora, which I personally use, but wouldn't run in production for anything mission critical.
Larrikin 6y ago
I like to think that Kotlin captured all the hopes that people had for swift that were dashed, but as an Android dev that loves using the language I sometimes can't tell if anyone cares for my favorite language or not.
arthur_sav 6y ago
It's kinda ironic for such a closed company to try to create a multiplatform language.

whatatita 6y ago

I would hapily give it a try with a `brew install swift` but any involved install process is off putting.

NobodyNada 6y ago
Homebrew requires the Xcode command-line tools, which includes the Swift toolchain. If you have `brew`, you already have Swift.
- iddan 6y ago
  Brew exists for Linux too
  - jolux 6y ago
    It does, but I’m not quite sure why you’d use it instead of apt or dnf or pacman...
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - tgymnich 6y ago
      brew lets you install packages without root/sudo.
      - heavyset_go 6y ago
        Linux distributions don't depend on running random code from GitHub repositories like Homebrew does, it has package repositories. If those package repositories are compromised, Homebrew isn't going to save you, because you won't be able to trust your system at all at that point. If you can't trust the software you're installing, it makes much more sense to run it in unprivileged containers or VMs than relying on account-level security. If a malicious package is distributed via Homebrew, it can still do a lot of damage running as your current user, as any data or resource accessible to your user can be exploited or exfiltrated. I tend to agree with what another HN member wrote about sudo/root and Homebrew: https://saagarjha.com/blog/2019/04/26/thoughts-on-macos-package-managers/#to-sudo-or-not-to-sudo https://saagarjha.com/blog/2019/04/26/thoughts-on-macos-pack...
        rsa25519 6y ago
        > Linux distributions don't depend on running random code from GitHub repositories like Homebrew does, it has package repositories. Is the Homebrew github repo not a package repository?
        heavyset_go 6y ago
        Anyone can upload a Homebrew formula to Github that installs a malicious binary via brew. Debian, for example, has trusted build systems that compile packages for their package repositories, and some packages already have reproducible builds[1]. Package repositories on Linux tend to provide the sources and binaries needed to install software. Homebrew just supplies formulas on GitHub, which only contain instructions on how to fetch and install externally hosted binaries, or instructions on how to fetch and install via externally hosted source code. [1] https://wiki.debian.org/ReproducibleBuilds https://wiki.debian.org/ReproducibleBuilds
        6y ago
  - alrs 6y ago
    if you're running brew on Linux, throw in the towel, it's over.

harikb 6y ago

+1. For non-apple usage, I would want to see lot more GitHub repos with open source support for Swift. Right now even Kotlin/Rust and others beat Swift in that respect. I really like the language, but I don’t know what is holding it back. I wish it solved concurrency without async/await keywords - that would have been a killer feature to compete with Go

saghm 6y ago
> I really like the language, but I don’t know what is holding it back From my limited outsider perspective, it seems like Apple's unwillingness to go out of their way to support Linux is what's holding it back. There seem to be a large number of people interested in using Swift on the server, but without first-party support, Swift on Linux will always be playing catch up, as new features will always land on MacOS first and often not be designed with any regard to how they'll work on Linux.

pjmlp 6y ago

Just like Objective-C, it is a language for Apple platforms and that is about it. Try to use GNUStep to see how much an Apple language has managed to thrive outside of the ecosystem.

slezyr 6y ago
I'm not sure that you can call this "thrive" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Software_that_uses_GNUstep https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Software_that_uses_GN...
- codetrotter 6y ago
  That’s what they are saying, it’s not thriving.
Apocryphon 6y ago
Objective-C at least has Oolite as a cross-platform killer app to show off.
- pjmlp 6y ago
  So much that I had to search for it.
raydev 6y ago
Did Apple ever support GNUStep or make an attempt for ObjC to work on Linux in this millenium? Because they do have people focused on maintaining Swift support for Linux. So it's a bit different.
- pjmlp 6y ago
  I wonder what those people do all day, when they just Java and Go on server side, as per job offers. When compared with Oracle, IBM, Microsoft and Google efforts for Linux support for their ecosystems, I really cannot see they work at all, given their output in the last five years.

xbar 6y ago

I had similar troubles trying to find the Swift ecosystem. The author's opening statement that Swift is everywhere rang hollow, even if it might be technically not strictly false when viewed from a certain angle under the right lighting conditions. So, I'm playing with Rust.

skohan 6y ago
Same. I love programming in Swift, but deploying it is a PITA. I got tired of waiting around for the cross-platform story to improve, so I moved on to Rust. It's refreshing to use tools which feel like they're made by someone who actually wants you to use them.

heavyset_go 6y ago

Swift had a chance 6-7 years ago when it first came out to capture mindshare on platforms other than iOS and macOS, but that chance was squandered. There's absolutely no reason someone would choose Swift over even .NET Core on other platforms these days. Thankfully, other languages have excelled during that timeframe.

blario 6y ago
[deleted]
- cygx 6y ago
  Wikipedia disagrees: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_(programming_language)#Version_history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_(programming_language)#V...

eecc 6y ago

To be fair, the instructions on https://swift.org/download/#using-downloads https://swift.org/download/#using-downloads are fairly straightforward and copy-pastable. Indeed the prominence given to pgp signature verification is a breath of fresh air compared to the current wave of pipe-shell intros: it's not gatekeeping to ask a would-be programmer to exercise some reading skills and internalize the idea of signature verification. :)

iudqnolq 6y ago
What's the point of signature verification if you get the signature and the binary from the same server? I appreciate the lack of pretenses of `curl | sudo bash`.
- eecc 6y ago
  Well, an attacker would need to first steal the private keys before they could generate the forged signatures. So, while you could still change the public keys in the instructions and trick first-comers to install a back-doored archive, you'd still be caught in a heartbeat by everyone else who already trusted the legitimate keys (which are published via a keyserver.) The chances and rewards of a successful, long-lasting attack are pretty slim, especially compared to those against other curl-bang installers (brew, oh-my-zsh...)
GoOnThenDoTell 6y ago
It kinda implies that no one writes Unix tools in swift, otherwise it would already be packaged in the disto of your choice
- Redoubts 6y ago
  Yeah though I can see people not wanting to deploy a fat runtime just to run some cli tools.
herbst 6y ago
Being able to install something is only half of the issue. I wouldnt touch a language for production where i have to setup my environment myself completely without package control.

H_L 6y ago

Swift is absolutely an afterthought on non-Apple platforms. Apple doesn't even provide ARM slices for the official Swift Docker images (https://hub.docker.com/_/swift?tab=tags https://hub.docker.com/_/swift?tab=tags) which makes server-side development on their own cutting-edge M1 (ARM) machines basically impossible.

_-david-_ 6y ago

I am not sure which distros you use, but Swift is available in Fedora and EPEL (CentOS/RHEL) 8. The package name is swift-lang.

WesolyKubeczek 6y ago
I can’t understand why you’re being downvoted. Unless, of course, the HN crowd doesn’t like anyone putting spikes into myths it likes to perpetuate, like “installing Swift is involved on Linux”. Hello, it’s “dnf install -y swift-lang”, how less involved does it have to get? “Burn the heretic! It’s involved! I’d rather curl | sudo bash things all day!”
- thegeekpirate 6y ago
  > WesolyKubeczek > I can’t understand why you’re being downvoted. Unless, of course, the HN crowd doesn’t like anyone putting spikes into myths it likes to perpetuate, like “installing Swift is involved on Linux”. > Hello, it’s “dnf install -y swift-lang”, how less involved does it have to get? > “Burn the heretic! It’s involved! I’d rather curl | sudo bash things all day!” It seems like it's _officially_ packaged on only two distros which are relevant to Linux developers—Fedora, and NixOS https://repology.org/project/swift-lang/versions https://repology.org/project/swift-lang/versions It's also _unofficially_ packaged (aka by the community) for Arch via AUR, Slackware via SlackBuilds, and RHEL/CentOS via EPEL. That's beyond pathetic, without even beginning to consider the resources of the company which backs them. Take a look at how many distros Zig supports, for instance https://repology.org/project/zig/versions https://repology.org/project/zig/versions ... ...and Swift released the open-sourced Linux version roughly six years ago.
teh_klev 6y ago
The problem with EPEL is that it's not supported by Redhat, and the packages that reside there are, for want of a better phrase, ephemeral. There are no guarantees. If you're after a long term and well supported solution then EPEL probably isn't for you. And the same goes for Fedora, which I personally use, but wouldn't run in production for anything mission critical.

Larrikin 6y ago

I like to think that Kotlin captured all the hopes that people had for swift that were dashed, but as an Android dev that loves using the language I sometimes can't tell if anyone cares for my favorite language or not.

arthur_sav 6y ago

It's kinda ironic for such a closed company to try to create a multiplatform language.