Naming issues is likely one of the two onerous issues in pc science, and Swift 6 has a “naming issues” downside in the meanwhile.
We’ve been repeatedly informed that Swift 6 will embrace some adjustments that break supply compatibility with Swift 5.x. That makes good sense, after all. That’s what a serious semantic model ought to be used for. To date so good. 👍
However what I mentioned there doesn’t give the entire image, and that’s the place the naming downside is available in. There’s the Swift 6 compiler, after which there’s “Swift 6 language mode”, and you’ll undertake the Swift 6 compiler with out adopting the language mode. All of the strict concurrency checks and knowledge race security options are within the language mode, and that brings the breaking adjustments.
You can begin utilizing the Swift 6 compiler now (or extra possible when it makes it to a beta/launch model of Xcode) after which opt-in to the language mode if you really feel like tackling the breaking adjustments. There’s no imminent deadline respiratory down your neck.
None of that is new information. The language mode has been talked about for a very long time, however the distinction is delicate and it handed me by till not too long ago, and chances are you’ll be in the identical scenario.
A significantly better particular person to speak about this could be Holly Borla, supervisor of the Swift Compiler Crew, and it simply so occurs we not too long ago had her as a visitor on the Swift Bundle Indexing podcast. It was a pleasure to speak to Holly, and we lined this problem in depth as one among a number of Swift 6 matters.
If you happen to don’t already subscribe to the podcast give this episode a hear and contemplate hitting that subscribe or observe button in your podcast participant. We speak about Swift (together with server-side), the event of the Swift Bundle Index challenge, and package deal ecosystem matters. We additionally spotlight a collection of community-written packages in each episode. Give it a attempt!
Dave Verwer 