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I'm surprised that they aren't making a bigger effort for Linux support. Last time I tried swift on linux it wasn't even packaged by ubuntu. If you `apt instal

I'm surprised that they aren't making a bigger effort for Linux support. Last time I tried swift on linux it wasn't even packaged by ubuntu. If you `apt install swift` you get some object store tool.

pjmlp 4y ago
Why should they? That isn't their target audience. Objective-C also has been available on Linux for about 25 years now, and it has hardly mattered.
- Kukumber 4y ago
  > Why should they? That isn't their target audience. Because they need it? Apple discontinued macOS server, i bet they use Linux in some of their servers All their networking related libs are available and tested for Linux [1, 2, 3] Let's not forget that they package Swift for Linux, and now also for Windows [4] Swift is a cross-platform language (you not wanting to understand it doesn't change this fact), it's not a macOS framework [1] - https://github.com/apple/swift-nio https://github.com/apple/swift-nio [2] - https://github.com/apple/swift-protobuf/blob/main/.github/workflows/build.yml#L14 https://github.com/apple/swift-protobuf/blob/main/.github/wo... [3] - https://github.com/apple/swift-distributed-actors/search?q=linux https://github.com/apple/swift-distributed-actors/search?q=l... [4] - https://forums.swift.org/t/announcing-swift-5-6-2-for-linux-and-windows/58167 https://forums.swift.org/t/announcing-swift-5-6-2-for-linux-...
  - pjmlp 4y ago
    That is charity to pay lip service to FOSS folks, just like the Darwin repos. Most of the work on Linux and Windows isn't made by Apple employees.
    - Kukumber 4y ago
      So you want a language fully owned by a company with 0 external contributors? History tells us that it is not a good idea ;) And your statement is not true at all, look at the commit history
      - pjmlp 4y ago
        It has gone quite alright for Objective-C, .NET, and plenty of others. Heck even C was fully owned by a company until UNIX V6 happened.
        Kukumber 4y ago
        objective-c is living its final years .net would have been dead without the community driven mono effort C "was", it would have been dead if it was still Notice the pattern?
        pjmlp 4y ago
        Objective-C only matters thanks Apple ecosystem. No one in the .NET world cared about mono, and if they hadn't be bought from Microsoft, they would already be doing something else, it isn't as if Xamarin and Unity were making them rich. C only got adopted, because companies got into commercial UNIX workstations and it came with them, on the base install. Until Sun introduced the concept of UNIX user and developer editions, no one cared GCC existed. Notice the pattern?
        rvz 4y ago
        No. I don't see this pattern with Golang. Did the community or external contributors implement generics into the language or did they wait for years for the core developers at Google to do it? Was WASM support a community driven effort from design to implementation or was it the core developers that did all the work? It appears that 99.99% of the work and proposals have been implemented by the core developer team at Google.
gh123man 4y ago
Last I checked golang is not packaged either and that doesn't make it any less useful on Linux. Swift works great on Linux. You can install it manually, or use the official docker image. I prefer using docker and have had a great experience (both developing and deploying).
- sanxiyn 4y ago
  golang is packaged in Ubuntu since 18.04. Last time you checked must have been a long time ago. https://packages.ubuntu.com/golang https://packages.ubuntu.com/golang
elpakal 4y ago
Small thing, but I really wish we had URLSession async/await API on Linux Foundation already. I use Swift to write CLI apps and ArgumentParser is awesome with support for async/await, but when it comes to making network calls I always need to remember that's still missing.
- gh123man 4y ago
  You do have SwiftNIO (as far as making network calls) - but that leaves a lot to be desired from an out of the box usability perspective. Otherwise I totally agree, Foundation on Linux is missing some useful things.
  - elpakal 4y ago
    True and thank you, it just feels a little overkill to bring in a separate package in my CLI apps just to make async network calls.
sanxiyn 4y ago
As I understand, the primary issue packaging Swift for Linux is LLVM. Swift uses Apple's fork of LLVM and distributions want to compile against system LLVM and do not want two copies of LLVM slightly different. This needs to be solved on Swift side. Rust had the same problem, and until it was fixed, Rust wasn't packaged by Linux distributions either. (I know this because I helped ensuring Rust's ability to compile against system LLVM.)

I'm surprised that they aren't making a bigger effort for Linux support. Last time I tried swift on linux it wasn't even packaged by ubuntu. If you `apt install swift` you get some object store tool.

pjmlp 4y ago

Why should they? That isn't their target audience. Objective-C also has been available on Linux for about 25 years now, and it has hardly mattered.

Kukumber 4y ago
> Why should they? That isn't their target audience. Because they need it? Apple discontinued macOS server, i bet they use Linux in some of their servers All their networking related libs are available and tested for Linux [1, 2, 3] Let's not forget that they package Swift for Linux, and now also for Windows [4] Swift is a cross-platform language (you not wanting to understand it doesn't change this fact), it's not a macOS framework [1] - https://github.com/apple/swift-nio https://github.com/apple/swift-nio [2] - https://github.com/apple/swift-protobuf/blob/main/.github/workflows/build.yml#L14 https://github.com/apple/swift-protobuf/blob/main/.github/wo... [3] - https://github.com/apple/swift-distributed-actors/search?q=linux https://github.com/apple/swift-distributed-actors/search?q=l... [4] - https://forums.swift.org/t/announcing-swift-5-6-2-for-linux-and-windows/58167 https://forums.swift.org/t/announcing-swift-5-6-2-for-linux-...
- pjmlp 4y ago
  That is charity to pay lip service to FOSS folks, just like the Darwin repos. Most of the work on Linux and Windows isn't made by Apple employees.
  - Kukumber 4y ago
    So you want a language fully owned by a company with 0 external contributors? History tells us that it is not a good idea ;) And your statement is not true at all, look at the commit history
    - pjmlp 4y ago
      It has gone quite alright for Objective-C, .NET, and plenty of others. Heck even C was fully owned by a company until UNIX V6 happened.
      - Kukumber 4y ago
        objective-c is living its final years .net would have been dead without the community driven mono effort C "was", it would have been dead if it was still Notice the pattern?
        pjmlp 4y ago
        Objective-C only matters thanks Apple ecosystem. No one in the .NET world cared about mono, and if they hadn't be bought from Microsoft, they would already be doing something else, it isn't as if Xamarin and Unity were making them rich. C only got adopted, because companies got into commercial UNIX workstations and it came with them, on the base install. Until Sun introduced the concept of UNIX user and developer editions, no one cared GCC existed. Notice the pattern?
        rvz 4y ago
        No. I don't see this pattern with Golang. Did the community or external contributors implement generics into the language or did they wait for years for the core developers at Google to do it? Was WASM support a community driven effort from design to implementation or was it the core developers that did all the work? It appears that 99.99% of the work and proposals have been implemented by the core developer team at Google.

gh123man 4y ago

Last I checked golang is not packaged either and that doesn't make it any less useful on Linux. Swift works great on Linux. You can install it manually, or use the official docker image. I prefer using docker and have had a great experience (both developing and deploying).

sanxiyn 4y ago
golang is packaged in Ubuntu since 18.04. Last time you checked must have been a long time ago. https://packages.ubuntu.com/golang https://packages.ubuntu.com/golang

elpakal 4y ago

Small thing, but I really wish we had URLSession async/await API on Linux Foundation already. I use Swift to write CLI apps and ArgumentParser is awesome with support for async/await, but when it comes to making network calls I always need to remember that's still missing.

gh123man 4y ago
You do have SwiftNIO (as far as making network calls) - but that leaves a lot to be desired from an out of the box usability perspective. Otherwise I totally agree, Foundation on Linux is missing some useful things.
- elpakal 4y ago
  True and thank you, it just feels a little overkill to bring in a separate package in my CLI apps just to make async network calls.

sanxiyn 4y ago

As I understand, the primary issue packaging Swift for Linux is LLVM. Swift uses Apple's fork of LLVM and distributions want to compile against system LLVM and do not want two copies of LLVM slightly different. This needs to be solved on Swift side. Rust had the same problem, and until it was fixed, Rust wasn't packaged by Linux distributions either. (I know this because I helped ensuring Rust's ability to compile against system LLVM.)