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Swift Toolbox – community-supported catalog of iOS and OS X libraries

143 points by adamjleonard 12y ago

adamjleonard 12y ago
We would love to hear your feedback. This project is very MVP and definitely has some issues that we will be iterating on over the next week. Any features you would like to see, let us know. We plan on adding a much nicer view for all the libraries with more information. The ability to the community to add tags to existing libraries, and more. Hope you guys enjoy!
- ikura 12y ago
  Nice idea... Currently it's only legal to share source code libraries though right? Binary swift frameworks would constitute Apple NDA covered software, so unless they're compile with Xcode 5 we'd have to wait for pro-tool libraries like Parse, Splitforce and Google Analytics to arrive?
- mytrile 12y ago
  Hey Adam, are you going to open source SwiftToolbox for other communities to create toolbox services ?
- irace 12y ago
  What about some kind of integration with CocoaPods? Seems like there's going to be some duplicated effort here.
  - jayvanguard 12y ago
    2nding
  - adamjleonard 12y ago
    Yep, going to look in to this in the near future. Going to talk to someone at CocoaPods on Friday.
    - millerm 12y ago
      Awesome!
agp2572 12y ago
Good idea.
skierscott 12y ago
Would it be acceptable for me to submit someone else's package? Can they edit tags/etc? Oh, and nice idea. I've been waiting for something like this. Ideally, I'd like to see something a package manager like brew or apt.
- jaegerpicker 12y ago
  It's already there CocoaPods, they already support swift and Obj-C and there is a huge library of packages available.
- adamjleonard 12y ago
  It would be acceptable. We will be adding the ability for the repo owner to manage the entire project, but also the community will be able to add extra tags, etc. These are in the upcoming weeks as we iterate on it.
mercurial 12y ago
As a non-Mac person, it's fascinating to see the difference in interest between Swift and Dart. Sounds like you can do "incremental progress" and succeed (Typescript), "radical progress" (Swift) and succeed, but something between the two doesn't work, at least as far as community uptake is concerned.
- Zelphyr 12y ago
  One possible difference is that Apple has signaled that Swift will be the language at some point. As far as I know Google didn't do that with Dart and, in fact, couldn't without getting buy-in from all the other browser vendors.
  - kybernetyk 12y ago
    > One possible difference is that Apple has signaled that Swift will be the language at some point Have they? Then I really hope they add some easy form of C++ interop to swift in a future release. There's so much C++ code out there in the Mac/iOS world that rewriting it to swift (or even just wrapping it in C) would make no economic sense.
    - astigsen 12y ago
      Since you can use Objective-C (and therefore also Objective-C++) libraries directly in Swift, it actually has quite a nice integration. Objective-C++ is a far better interface layer than something like FFI or having to write C wrappers for everything (as you see in most other languages).
      - dottrap 12y ago
        Nitpick: Objective-C and C are terrific for interoperation. FFI works pretty well with Obj-C and C too because it is all based on C binary compatibility and predictable symbol mangling. This is how previous Apple language bridges like PyObjC and RubyCocoa worked. C++ and thus Objective-C++ has always been a disaster for FFI or anything that depends on binary compatibility or predictable symbol name mangling. Obj-C++ has a lot of ugly areas partly because of this. Kudos to Apple to making it work as well as it does. Swift is terrific that it also seems to interoperate with C/Obj-C nearly seamlessly (bridging headers), but it is no surprise that the Swift documentation immediately says it doesn't support C++ and you must build C interface wrappers. * Edit: reclarified comment
jaegerpicker 12y ago
Awesome project I know I'll use several of this packages. It would be awesome to list the packages CocoaPods name if it has one. So it's easy to install.
- timanglade 12y ago
  CocoaPods does not support pure Swift libraries yet. This Github issue lists some ways you can help: https://github.com/CocoaPods/CocoaPods/pull/2222 https://github.com/CocoaPods/CocoaPods/pull/2222
niix 12y ago
This is a great help for someone like myself who is just learning Swift. Pretty excited for some of the JavaScript style libraries being ported over to Swift.
- adamjleonard 12y ago
  Seems to be quite a few in regards to the functional world. Underscore has a port over and a couple others that mimic this.
- wuliwong 12y ago
  If you are just starting out, checkout http://www.sososwift.com http://www.sososwift.com It has tons and tons of resources.

143 points by adamjleonard 12y ago

We would love to hear your feedback. This project is very MVP and definitely has some issues that we will be iterating on over the next week. Any features you would like to see, let us know. We plan on adding a much nicer view for all the libraries with more information. The ability to the community to add tags to existing libraries, and more. Hope you guys enjoy!

ikura 12y ago
Nice idea... Currently it's only legal to share source code libraries though right? Binary swift frameworks would constitute Apple NDA covered software, so unless they're compile with Xcode 5 we'd have to wait for pro-tool libraries like Parse, Splitforce and Google Analytics to arrive?
mytrile 12y ago
Hey Adam, are you going to open source SwiftToolbox for other communities to create toolbox services ?
irace 12y ago
What about some kind of integration with CocoaPods? Seems like there's going to be some duplicated effort here.
- jayvanguard 12y ago
  2nding
- adamjleonard 12y ago
  Yep, going to look in to this in the near future. Going to talk to someone at CocoaPods on Friday.
  - millerm 12y ago
    Awesome!

agp2572 12y ago

Good idea.

skierscott 12y ago

Would it be acceptable for me to submit someone else's package? Can they edit tags/etc? Oh, and nice idea. I've been waiting for something like this. Ideally, I'd like to see something a package manager like brew or apt.

jaegerpicker 12y ago
It's already there CocoaPods, they already support swift and Obj-C and there is a huge library of packages available.
adamjleonard 12y ago
It would be acceptable. We will be adding the ability for the repo owner to manage the entire project, but also the community will be able to add extra tags, etc. These are in the upcoming weeks as we iterate on it.

mercurial 12y ago

As a non-Mac person, it's fascinating to see the difference in interest between Swift and Dart. Sounds like you can do "incremental progress" and succeed (Typescript), "radical progress" (Swift) and succeed, but something between the two doesn't work, at least as far as community uptake is concerned.

Zelphyr 12y ago
One possible difference is that Apple has signaled that Swift will be the language at some point. As far as I know Google didn't do that with Dart and, in fact, couldn't without getting buy-in from all the other browser vendors.
- kybernetyk 12y ago
  > One possible difference is that Apple has signaled that Swift will be the language at some point Have they? Then I really hope they add some easy form of C++ interop to swift in a future release. There's so much C++ code out there in the Mac/iOS world that rewriting it to swift (or even just wrapping it in C) would make no economic sense.
  - astigsen 12y ago
    Since you can use Objective-C (and therefore also Objective-C++) libraries directly in Swift, it actually has quite a nice integration. Objective-C++ is a far better interface layer than something like FFI or having to write C wrappers for everything (as you see in most other languages).
    - dottrap 12y ago
      Nitpick: Objective-C and C are terrific for interoperation. FFI works pretty well with Obj-C and C too because it is all based on C binary compatibility and predictable symbol mangling. This is how previous Apple language bridges like PyObjC and RubyCocoa worked. C++ and thus Objective-C++ has always been a disaster for FFI or anything that depends on binary compatibility or predictable symbol name mangling. Obj-C++ has a lot of ugly areas partly because of this. Kudos to Apple to making it work as well as it does. Swift is terrific that it also seems to interoperate with C/Obj-C nearly seamlessly (bridging headers), but it is no surprise that the Swift documentation immediately says it doesn't support C++ and you must build C interface wrappers. * Edit: reclarified comment

jaegerpicker 12y ago

Awesome project I know I'll use several of this packages. It would be awesome to list the packages CocoaPods name if it has one. So it's easy to install.

timanglade 12y ago
CocoaPods does not support pure Swift libraries yet. This Github issue lists some ways you can help: https://github.com/CocoaPods/CocoaPods/pull/2222 https://github.com/CocoaPods/CocoaPods/pull/2222

niix 12y ago

This is a great help for someone like myself who is just learning Swift. Pretty excited for some of the JavaScript style libraries being ported over to Swift.

adamjleonard 12y ago
Seems to be quite a few in regards to the functional world. Underscore has a port over and a couple others that mimic this.
wuliwong 12y ago
If you are just starting out, checkout http://www.sososwift.com http://www.sososwift.com It has tons and tons of resources.