Swift is a general-purpose programming language that is developed by Apple and was launched back in 2014. Although initially a proprietary language, Swift went open source for Apple platforms and Linux in 2015.
Today, the Swift team has announced that support for the language has arrived on Windows 10, with new toolchain images now available to download for the operating system.
In a blog post, Saleem Abdulrasool who is a member of the Swift Core Team and a software engineer at Google Brain, has stated that the process of porting Swift to Windows does not only include shipping the compiler but also standard and core libraries since these reduce the coding complexity for developers. With version 5.3 of Swift, development on Windows purely in Swift is now possible, and is at a point "where early adopters can start using Swift to build real experiences". It also allows developers to take advantage of existing Windows libraries.
Abdulrasool has demoed a Calculator app written in Swift that utilizes application code as well as Windows system libraries. Early adopters such as Readdle have also been testing the development of cross-platform applications and have been fairly successful in their endeavors as well.
Swift Package Manager is currently not supported on Windows, but Abdulrasool says that it is coming soon as well. He goes on to say that:
Adding support for Windows to Swift is the beginning of a journey. The current support sets the first milestone where the language is usable. There is yet another even broader part of the ecosystem like lldb and the Swift Package Manager which still need more work to be as complete in their support for this different platform.
Those interested in trying out Swift on Windows can refer to the "Getting Started" page here. People interested in working on core tooling can check out the Swift Bug Tracker here.
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