CHANGELOG.md

Note: This is in reverse chronological order, so newer entries are added to the top.

Swift Next

Swift 6.0

• #7813

  Starting from tools-version 6.0, swiftLanguageMode can be specified at the target level, allowing for gradual per-target migration to the Swift 6 language mode. The swiftLanguageVersions setting has been deprecated and renamed to swiftLanguageModes.

• #7530

  Starting from tools-version 6.0 makes it possible for packages to depend on each other if such dependency doesn't form any target-level cycles. For example, package A can depend on B and B on A unless targets in B depend on products of A that depend on some of the same targets from B and vice versa.

• #7741

  Fixed an issue where repositories would be re-cloned each build rather than using the cache due to git validation errors.

• #7507

  swift experimental-sdk command is deprecated with swift sdk command replacing it. --experimental-swift-sdk and --experimental-swift-sdks-path options on swift build are deprecated with replacements that don't have the experimental prefix.

• #7722

  An additional --checksum option is now required for swift sdk install subcommand with remote URLs as arguments. --checksum allows users of a Swift SDK to specify a checksum provided by the SDK publisher. A checksum can be produced by running swift package compute-checksum command (introduced in SE-0272) with the Swift SDK bundle archive as an argument.

• #7535

  The swift sdk configuration subcommand is deprecated with a replacement named configure that has options that exactly match SE-0387 proposal text.

• #7202

  Package manifests can now access information about the Git repository the given package is in via the context object's gitInformation property. This allows to determine the current tag (if any), the current commit and whether or not there are uncommited changes.

• #7201

  // swift-tools-version: can now be specified on subsequent lines of Package.swift, for example when first few lines are required to contain a licensing comment header.

• #7118

  Macros cross-compiled by SwiftPM with Swift SDKs are now correctly built, loaded, and evaluated for the host triple.

  Packages with modules that incorrectly imported macro modules directly instead of importing macro interface modules will no longer build with swift build.

Swift 5.10

• #7010

  On macOS, swift build and swift run now produce binaries that allow backtraces in debug builds. Pass SWIFT_BACKTRACE=enable=yes environment variable to enable backtraces on such binaries when running them.

• #7101

  Binary artifacts are now cached along side repository checkouts so they do not need to be re-downloaded across projects.

Swift 5.9

• SE-0386

  SwiftPM packages can now use package as a new access modifier, allowing accessing symbols in another target / module within the same package without making it public.

• SE-0387

  New swift experimental-sdk experimental command is now available for managing Swift SDK bundles that follow the format described in SE-0387: "Swift SDKs for Cross-Compilation".

• SE-0391

  SwiftPM can now publish to a registry following the publishing spec as defined in SE-0391. SwiftPM also gains support for signed packages. Trust-on-first-use (TOFU) check which includes only fingerprints (e.g., checksums) previously has been extended to include signing identities, and it is enforced for source archives as well as package manifests.

• #5966

  Plugin compilation can be influenced by using -Xbuild-tools-swiftc arguments in the SwiftPM command line. This is similar to the existing mechanism for influencing the manifest compilation using -Xmanifest arguments. Manifest compilation will also be influenced by -Xbuild-tools-swiftc, but only if no other -Xmanifest arguments are provided. Using -Xmanifest will show a deprecation message. -Xmanifest will be removed in the future.

• #6060

  Support for building plugin dependencies for the host when cross-compiling.

• #6067

  Basic support for a new .embedInCode resource rule which allows embedding the contents of the resource into the executable code by generating a byte array, e.g.

  struct PackageResources {
    static let best_txt: [UInt8] = [104,101,108,108,111,32,119,111,114,108,100,10]
  }
  

• #6111

  Package creation using package init now also supports the build tool plugin and command plugin types.

• #6114

  Added a new allowNetworkConnections(scope:reason:) for giving a command plugin permissions to access the network. Permissions can be scoped to Unix domain sockets in general or specifically for Docker, as well as local or remote IP connections which can be limited by port. For non-interactive use cases, there is also a --allow-network-connections commandline flag to allow network connections for a particular scope.

• #6144

  Remove the system-module and manifest templates and clean up the remaining empty, library, and executable templates so they include the minimum information needed to get started, with links to documentation in the generated library, executable, and test content.

• #6185, #6200

  Add a new CompilerPluginSupport module which contains the definition for macro targets. Macro targets allow authoring and distribution of custom Swift macros such as expression macros.

• #6276

  Add new build setting in the package manifest that enables Swift/C++ Interoperability for a given Swift target.

  .interoperabilityMode(.Cxx, version: "swift-5.9")
  

• #6294

  When a package contains a single target, sources may be distributed anywhere within the ./Sources directory. If sources are placed in a subdirectory under ./Sources/<target>, or there is more than one target, the existing expectation for sources apply.

• #6540

  Build tool plugins can be used with C-family targets

• #6663

  Add visionOS as a platform alongside iOS and other platforms

Swift 5.8

• SE-0362

  SwiftPM targets can now specify the upcoming language features they require. Package.swift manifest syntax has been expanded with an API to include setting enableUpcomingFeature and enableExperimentalFeature flags at the target level, as specified by SE-0362.

• SE-0378

  SwiftPM now supports token authentication when interacting with a package registry. The swift package-registry command has two new subcommands login and logout as defined in SE-0378 for adding/removing registry credentials.

• #5810

  SwiftPM now allows exposing an executable product that consists solely of a binary target that is backed by an artifact bundle. This allow vending binary executables as their own separate package, independently of the plugins that are using them.

• #5819

  Improved handling of offline behavior when a cached version of a dependency exists on disk. SwiftPM will check for network availability status to determine if it should attempt to update a checked version of a dependency, and when offline will use the cached version without an update.

• #5874

  In packages using tools version 5.8 or later, Foundation is no longer implicitly imported into package manifests. If Foundation APIs are used, the module needs to be imported explicitly.

• #5892

  Added new --emit-extension-block-symbols and --omit-extension-block-symbols via swift package dump-symbol-graph. --emit-extension-block-symbols dumps symbol graph files that are extension block symbol format. The default behavior does not change. The --omit-extension-block-symbols flag will be used to explicitly disable the feature once the default behavior has been changed to --emit-extension-block-symbols in the future.

• #5949

  New --pkg-config-path option on build, test, and run commands has been introduced as an alternative to passing PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable. It allows specifying alternative path to search for .pc files used by pkg-config. Use the option multiple times to specify more than one path.

Swift 5.7

• SE-0292

  SwiftPM can now resolve dependencies from a server compliant with the package registry server API defined in SE-0292.

• SE-0339

  Module aliases can now be defined in the package manifest to disambiguate between modules with the same name originating from different packages.

• #4119

  Add a --disable-testable-imports flag to swift test with which tests are built without the testability feature (import @testable disabled).

• #4131

  Update to manifest API to make it impossible to create an invalid build settings condition.

• #4135

  Enable linker dead stripping for all platforms. This can be disabled with --disable-dead-strip

• #4168

  Update to manifest API to make it impossible to create an invalid target dependency condition.

Swift 5.6

• SE-0303

  Package plugins of the type buildTool can now be declared in packages that specify a tools version of 5.6 or later, and can be invoked using the swift build command.

• SE-0332

  Package plugins of the type command can now be declared in packages that specify a tools version of 5.6 or later, and can be invoked using the swift package subcommand.

• #3649

  Semantic version dependencies can now be resolved against Git tag names that contain only major and minor version identifiers. A tag with the form X.Y will be treated as X.Y.0. This improves compatibility with existing repositories.

• #3486

  Both parsing and comparison of semantic versions now strictly follow the Semantic Versioning 2.0.0 specification.

  The parsing logic now treats the first "-" in a version string as the delimiter between the version core and the pre-release identifiers, only if there is no preceding "+". Otherwise, it's treated as part of a build metadata identifier.

  The comparison logic now ignores build metadata identifiers, and treats 2 semantic versions as equal if and only if they're equal in their major, minor, patch versions and pre-release identifiers.

• #3641

  Soft deprecate .package(name:, url:) dependency syntax in favor of .package(url:), given that an explicit name attribute is no longer needed for target dependencies lookup.

• #3641

  Adding a dependency requirement can now be done with the convenience initializer .package(url: String, exact: Version).

• #3641

  Dependency requirement enum calling convention is deprecated in favour of labeled argument:

  • .package(url: String, .branch(String)) -> .package(url: String, branch: String)
  • .package(url: String, .revision(String)) -> .package(url: String, revision: String)
  • .package(url: String, .exact(Version)) -> .package(url: String, exact: Version)

• #3717

  Introduce a second version of Package.resolved file format which more accurately captures package identity.

• #3890

  To increase the security of packages, SwiftPM performs trust on first use (TOFU) validation. The fingerprint of a package is now being recorded when the package is first downloaded from a Git repository or package registry. Subsequent downloads must have fingerpints matching previous recorded values, otherwise it would result in build warnings or failures depending on settings.

• #3670, #3901, #3942

  Location of configuration files (including mirror file) have changed to accomodate new features that require more robust configuration directories structure, such as SE-0292:

  • <project>/.swiftpm/config (mirrors file) was moved to <project>/.swiftpm/configuration/mirrors.json. SwiftPM 5.6 will automatically copy the file from the old location to the new one and emit a warning to prompt the user to delete the file from the old location.
  • ~/.swiftpm/config/collections.json (collections file) was moved to ~/.swiftpm/configuration/collections.json. SwiftPM 5.6 will automatically copy the file from the old location to the new one and emit a warning to prompt the user to delete the file from the old location.

Swift 5.5

• #3410

  In a package that specifies a minimum tools version of 5.5, @main can now be used in a single-source file executable as long as the name of the source file isn't main.swift. To work around special compiler semantics with single-file modules, SwiftPM now passes -parse-as-library when compiling an executable module that contains a single Swift source file whose name is not main.swift.

• #3310

  Adding a dependency requirement can now be done with the convenience initializer .package(url: String, revision: String).

• #3292

  Adding a dependency requirement can now be done with the convenience initializer .package(url: String, branch: String).

• #3280

  A more intuitive .product(name:, package:) target dependency syntax is now accepted, where package is the package identifier as defined by the package URL.

• #3316

  Test targets can now link against executable targets as if they were libraries, so that they can test any data structures or algorithms in them. All the code in the executable except for the main entry point itself is available to the unit test. Separate executables are still linked, and can be tested as a subprocess in the same way as before. This feature is available to tests defined in packages that have a tools version of 5.5 or newer.

Swift 5.4

• #2937

  • Improvements

    Package manifests can now have any combination of leading whitespace characters. This allows more flexibility in formatting the manifests.

    SR-13566 The Swift tools version specification in each manifest file now accepts any combination of horizontal whitespace characters surrounding swift-tools-version, if and only if the specified version ≥ 5.4. For example, //swift-tools-version: 5.4 and // swift-tools-version: 5.4 are valid.

    All Unicode line terminators are now recognized in Package manifests. This ensures correctness in parsing manifests that are edited and/or built on many non-Unix-like platforms that use ASCII or Unicode encodings.

  • API Removal

    ToolsVersionLoader.Error.malformedToolsVersion(specifier: String, currentToolsVersion: ToolsVersion) is replaced by ToolsVersionLoader.Error.malformedToolsVersionSpecification(_ malformation: ToolsVersionSpecificationMalformation).

    ToolsVersionLoader.split(_ bytes: ByteString) -> (versionSpecifier: String?, rest: [UInt8]) and ToolsVersionLoader.regex are together replaced by ToolsVersionLoader.split(_ manifest: String) -> ManifestComponents.

  • Source Breakages for Swift Packages

    The package manager now throws an error if a manifest file contains invalid UTF-8 byte sequences.

Swift 4.2

• SE-0209

  The swiftLanguageVersions property no longer takes its Swift language versions via a freeform Integer array; instead it should be passed as a new SwiftVersion enum array.

• SE-0208

  The Package manifest now accepts a new type of target, systemLibrary. This deprecates "system-module packages" which are now to be included in the packages that require system-installed dependencies.

• SE-0201

  Packages can now specify a dependency as package(path: String) to point to a path on the local filesystem which hosts a package. This will enable interconnected projects to be edited in parallel.

• #1604

  The generate-xcodeproj has a new --watch option to automatically regenerate the Xcode project if changes are detected. This uses the watchman tool to detect filesystem changes.

• Scheme generation has been improved:

  • One scheme containing all regular and test targets of the root package.
  • One scheme per executable target containing the test targets whose dependencies intersect with the dependencies of the exectuable target.

• SR-6978 Packages which mix versions of the form vX.X.X with Y.Y.Y will now be parsed and ordered numerically.

• #1489 A simpler progress bar is now generated for "dumb" terminals.

Swift 4.1

• #1485 Support has been added to automatically generate the LinuxMain files for testing on Linux systems. On a macOS system, run swift test --generate-linuxmain.

• SR-5918 Package manifests that include multiple products with the same name will now throw an error.

Swift 4.0

• The generated Xcode project creates a dummy target which provides autocompletion for the manifest files. The name of the dummy target is in format: <PackageName>PackageDescription.

• --specifier option for swift test is now deprecated. Use --filter instead which supports regex.

Swift 3.0

• SE-0135

  The package manager now supports writing Swift 3.0 specific tags and manifests, in order to support future evolution of the formats used in both cases while still allowing the Swift 3.0 package manager to continue to function.

• SE-0129

  Test modules now must be named with a Tests suffix (e.g., Foo/Tests/BarTests/BarTests.swift). This name also defines the name of the Swift module, replacing the old BarTestSuite module name.

• It is no longer necessary to run swift build before running swift test (it will always regenerates the build manifest when necessary). In addition, it now accepts (and requires) the same -Xcc, etc. options as are used with swift build.

• The Package initializer now requires the name: parameter.