Swift is now open source and well-suited to use in 3D configurator projects. Today, Apple launched the open source Swift community, as well as amazing new tools and resources, including..:
Now anyone can download the code and builds to see what the team is up to. Advanced developers interested in contributing to the project can report bugs, join the community, and make their own fixes and improvements to make Swift even better. When developing the App Store, you should always use the stable versions of Swift included in Xcode, and this remains a prerequisite for submitting apps.
Swift.org
Swift.org is a completely new site dedicated to Open Source Swift. This site contains resources for the developer community who want to develop Swift, contribute corrections, and most importantly, interact with each other. Swift.org Hosts:
Swift.org is where the daily development work for Swift takes place as the developer community works together to bring Swift to new platforms, add new features, and constantly evolve our favorite language.
Source code.
Apple has a new home on Github at github.com/apple, where you can find all the source code for the Swift project. Public repositories include the Swift compiler, the LLDB debugger and REPL, the standard and core libraries, the package manager and other supporting projects.
GitHub is already a very popular place for developers to work together. It’s easy to view the source code directly on the website or quickly check it out on your machine. If you want to contribute a patch, pull requests are accepted.
Swift Package Manager.
A brand new project was launched today: the Swift Package Manager. This early-stage project is openly developed from the beginning. The repository is at a very early stage and Apple, in collaboration with the community, will define what a great project manager should do and how it can be used intuitively to give it the power it needs to scale across the many platforms on which Swift will thrive.
Core Libraries.
Apple has long provided an extensive collection of frameworks that provide overarching functionality required for a variety of software. Frameworks such as Foundation, libdispatch and XCTest make it much easier to write more complex programs and ensure that developers have the same benefits when transferring their Swift knowledge to new platforms. Whether you’re writing apps for the iPhone or Mac, or creating a new cloud service on Linux, Swift libraries give you the building blocks you can rely on.
Platforms.
Open Source Swift runs on a Mac and can create applications for OS X, iOS, watchOS and tvOS. Swift.org also offers a Linux version of Swift, complete with a Linux toolset including package manager support, the LLDB debugger and the REPL. The Swift community continues to spread. While students and professionals learn to program in Swift, every new platform and every new use case in the entire technology industry opens up new possibilities for you.
First Steps.
Getting started is easy. Swift.org hosts binary downloads of the compilers and command line tools for the Apple and Linux platforms to get you up and running quickly. The latest version of Xcode supports an alternative toolchain option that allows you to test Swift’s latest open source builds from within Xcode. And Swift.org has great tutorials to guide you through the process of setting up your environment to work with Open Source Swift.