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Swift Is Open Source
Swift, Apple's hot new programming language, is now open source. It is available (or will be once the web site isn't so overwhelmed!) for Mac and Linux under an Apache 2.0 license.
"Swift is now open source! We are excited by this new chapter in the story of Swift. After Apple unveiled the Swift programming language, it quickly became one of the fastest growing languages in history. Swift makes it easy to write software that is incredibly fast and safe by design. Now that Swift is open source, you can help make the best general purpose programming language available everywhere. "
Apple Open-Sources Swift and Releases Linux port, as Promised
Apple's Swift programming language may eventually replace the respected but arcane Objective C as the native language for OS X and iOS development, but if you don't have a Mac you might be forgiven for not having taken an interest so far.
However, as MacRumors now reports, Apple have now delivered on their promise to open-source Swift and release a Linux port. It doesn't sound as if the Linux port is quite ready for production use just yet, but the source is out there. Does this mean that Swift is now a contender for general purpose programming?
(Note: at the time of writing, the servers at Swift.org are failing to live up to their name.)
(Score: 2) by fleg on Saturday December 05 2015, @02:26AM
anyone tried it yet? would be interested to hear what its like. from installation on up.
(Score: 3, Informative) by theluggage on Saturday December 05 2015, @10:55AM
from installation on up.
As for installation, If you've got Ubuntu 14.04 or 15.10, there are snapshot builds - just apt-get install clang and then download the tarball, unpack it and add it to your PATH. If you haven't got Ubuntu 14.04/15.10 then you get to build your own from the git repository - or use Ubuntu in a VM. Now the source is released, proper packages for all the distros will doubtless follow.
The Linux version doesn't have the fancy, graphical 'Playground' facility you get in XCode in OS X but it does have an interactive shell that you can play about in.
I don't think anybody is suggesting that the Linux version is ready for production use yet. Really, the news at the moment is that Apple really have open-sourced it (as they've long promised).