ZDnet reports that, concurrent with the release of version 2.2 of its implementation of the Swift programming language, Apple Inc. has made available a port of the compiler, standard libraries, debugger and REPL (a CLI) to the Ubuntu operating system. The port does not include the core libraries, which the company says are not suitable for production use. The language is frequently used in software intended to run under Apple's OS X and iOS operating systems.
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Software engineer, Dave DeLong, has written an 18-part series on building an HTTP framework in Swift. Apple's Swift programming language is a general-purpose, open source, compiled programming language intended to replace Objective-C. It is licensed under the Apache 2.0 license. In his series, Dave covers an Intro to HTTP, Basic Structures, Request Bodies, Loading Requests, Testing and Mocking, Chaining Loaders, Dynamically Modifying Requests, Request Options, Resetting, Cancellation, Throttling, Retrying, Basic Authentication, OAuth Setup, OAuth, and Composite Loaders.
Over the course of this series, we've started with a simple idea and taken it to some pretty fascinating places. The idea we started with is that a network layer can be abstracted out to the idea of "I send this request, and eventually I get a response".
I started working on this approach after reading Rob Napier's blog post on protocols on protocols. In it, he makes the point that we seem to misunderstand the seminal "Protocol Oriented Programming" idea introduced by Dave Abrahams Crusty at WWDC 2015. We especially miss the point when it comes to networking, and Rob's subsequent posts go in to this idea further.
One of the things I hope you've realized throughout this blog post series is that nowhere in this series did I ever talk about Codable. Nothing in this series is generic (with the minor exception of making it easy to specify a request body). There is no mention of deserialization or JSON or decoding responses or anything. This is extremely deliberate.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 28 2016, @01:56PM
The Adolf Hitler figure has a stiff little waxy penis that you get to suck for £5? Very tempting!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 28 2016, @04:28PM
Wasn't this basically the plot of "Mein Camphor"?
(Score: 2, Redundant) by bitstream on Monday March 28 2016, @02:05PM
Will it work on Unixes without systemd ?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 28 2016, @03:31PM
Will it work on Unixes without systemd ?
Trick question. No self-respecting Unix system (or derivative) uses SystemD in the first place!
(Score: 2) by bitstream on Monday March 28 2016, @04:31PM
There already are Unixes that has been RedHated..
The next step is Extinguish by requiring systemd API for applications.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Monday March 28 2016, @06:29PM
No self-respecting Unix system (or derivative) uses SystemD in the first place!
Why?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 28 2016, @11:28PM
Why?
The Unix philosophy [wikipedia.org]
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 29 2016, @12:48PM
Besides the oft repeated "ignores Unix philosophy", systemd does some things right but get so many others wrong. The most offensive of all is the fact that systemd is worming its way into desktop software via low level libraries making desktop environments only compatible with systemd. This means XFCE, Gnome, Mate, etc, will be incompatible with non-systemd Linux and *BSD without systemd shims or a fork. How the hell did we go from an init system to a core library? It's creators know nothing of good design, simplicity or usability. They simply want a feather in their cap. Fuck em.
(Score: 2) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Monday March 28 2016, @02:09PM
Why can't I ever connect to ZD Net? I always get an error like this:
An error occurred while processing your request.
Reference #97.17aa1160.1459174048.200e0018
What is ZD Net doing that causes this? I really wanted to read this article, too. Here's a similar article:
http://news.softpedia.com/news/apple-releases-swift-2-2-programming-language-with-ubuntu-linux-support-502011.shtml [softpedia.com]
Can't wait for Fedora support. Where's the RPM?
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 28 2016, @02:22PM
works for me using a vpn and noscript in firefox on linux spoofing my user-agent to say i'm running chrome on win10
requestpolicy is set to permit zdnet to pull in cross-site content from cbsistatic.com and that is the only cross-site reference on the page (probably because javascript is disabled)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 28 2016, @02:32PM
maybe you are going thru some sort of proxy?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 28 2016, @02:27PM
The port does not include the core libraries, which the company says are not suitable for production use.
It's another Mono project. OK if you have lots of time on your hands and no particular goals.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 28 2016, @03:04PM
Yeah, I got into the hype when it first was ported over.
Swift has some nice features, but after awhile I was all "whatever."
I'm sure there's some evil purpose for doing this, but I don't know what it is. They'll probably fail in their efforts (like Mono seemed to) because, let's face it, who cares?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 28 2016, @05:25PM
> It's another Mono project. OK if you have lots of time on your hands and no particular goals.
RTFA the libraries have been ported they just aren't stable yet, they are expected to be available with the 3.0 release
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Monday March 28 2016, @04:43PM
After fixing the broken link, look at what is in the core library that isn't 'ready for production use' and laugh. So they are calling a 2.2 version on a product that ships without networking, internationalization, "commonly needed types", JSON, XML, etc. In 2016 they are shipping a language without any of those things. Not a prerelease beta, this is 2.2!
And none of that addresses the elephant in the room. Do I need a meme to explain this? Admiral Ackbar saying "Its a trap!" or something? Does the word "Mono" ring any bells?
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Monday March 28 2016, @04:56PM
Well, Microsoft's been trying to copy Apple's lock-in with the Microsoft App Store and Metro interfaces since Windows 8, so this is only fair.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 28 2016, @05:33PM
> And none of that addresses the elephant in the room. Do I need a meme to explain this? Admiral Ackbar saying "Its a trap!" or something? Does the word "Mono" ring any bells?
How has Mono proven to be a trap?
Its easy to distrust MS I do it all the time. But damn boy, after 12+ years you gotta have more than "MS sucks" to claim mono is some kind of trojan horse.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 28 2016, @11:44PM
3 decades later, you can't possibly be that naive.
As such, the logical conclusion is fanboy/troll.
Embrace, extend, and extinguish [wikipedia.org]
Mono has NEVER been 100 percent compatible with dotNET--and if that ever -did- happen, M$ would simply EXTEND the protocol to make it incompatible once again.
Now (as if it wasn't obvious before), you need M$'s closed proprietary junk to make dotNET work.
An 8 year old can connect the dots.
...and there's the guy who kick-started the thing. [google.com]
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 29 2016, @04:22AM
Who cares if Mono is completely compatible with .Net? You can use Mono as a framework just as you can with all the other frameworks.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 29 2016, @04:48AM
agreed, as the original "naive" poster I say that if the worst thing gweg can say about Mono is that it isn't a 100% feature-complete and perfect re-implementation and that Icaza is a douche, then what gweg has actually done is disprove his own premise. By that measure wine is a trap too.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Monday March 28 2016, @07:24PM
Are you saying the hyperlink to https://swift.org/core-libraries/ [swift.org] is broken somehow?
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Monday March 28 2016, @07:36PM
Yes, it was broken this morning. I added a www. and got through. But you are correct that it works now. Meh, welcome to the Internet. Just checked the other site and they weren't getting hammered by that.
(Score: 2) by ThePhilips on Thursday April 07 2016, @09:41AM
Does the word "Mono" ring any bells?
No, it doesn't.
Lots of the development tools Apple does flows back into the open source: GDB, bitutils, GCC and clang support the Apple extensions and Object-C out of box.
the core library that isn't 'ready for production use'
Way to twist it. Swift developers honestly say "please do not use for production" and you throw their honesty at them? and compare them to MSFT which has history of shipping and forcing users and developers to work with half-cooked crap and pretend it is production ready?