Linux users will be glad to note that Apple’s open-source programming language Swift has taken the first big step towards the Linux support. The Swift 2.2 was released on March 21 and it features first Linux port for the Ubuntu 14.04 and 15.10 Operating Systems in the form of binaries.
Neowin notes, that since there’s a Linux build now, “it won’t be long before it unofficially arrives” on various distributions.
The release post states, “The Linux port is still relatively new and in this release does not include the Swift Core Libraries (which will appear in Swift 3). The port does, however, include LLDB and the REPL.”
LLDB is the debugger of LLVM project and is also being used in Apple’s Xcode while REPL (read–eval–print loop) is the language shell.
Apple’s decision to make Swift open-source has made it a lot easier for all the developers out there to take part in the evolution of this language. A host of bugs has already been fixed in version 2.2, thanks to this move.
The aim of this change is to bring better natural language programming and it is rather put on the label in a dull way which reads, “Allow (most) keywords as argument labels.” Only a few of labels like inout, var and let are excluded after this fix.
In the new version, Tuple comparison operators have been included. The earlier typealias keyword has been replaced with associatedtype and the AnySequence.init has also got a fix. Argument labels have been added to the naming functions, and a new Objective-C referencing initialisation syntax has also been included.
Swift version 2.2 finally got version configuration which will help developers to track syntax changes across various Swift versions without the need for maintaining separate source trees.
Stay tuned for more news and updates and do leave your comments below.