The Next Chapter in Swift Build Technologies
Article Summary
Owen Voorhees from Apple just dropped a bombshell: the build engine that powers millions of App Store apps is now open source. This changes everything for Swift developers working across platforms.
Apple is open sourcing Swift Build, the same powerful build engine that runs inside Xcode and builds Apple's own operating systems. This move aims to unify the fragmented Swift build experience across platforms and eliminate the confusion between Xcode and Swift Package Manager builds.
Key Takeaways
- Swift Build now supports Linux and Windows, not just Apple platforms
- Robust Swift compiler integration maximizes parallelism when building code
- SwiftPM getting alternate build engine via pull request submitted today
- Same engine powers millions of App Store apps and Apple's OS builds
- Aims to end behavior mismatches between Xcode and SwiftPM builds
Critical Insight
Apple is unifying Swift's build experience by open sourcing Xcode's battle-tested build engine, bringing enterprise-grade build capabilities to all Swift developers regardless of platform or IDE.
