{"id":1975,"date":"2015-12-05T11:35:51","date_gmt":"2015-12-05T17:35:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dev.iachieved.it\/iachievedit\/?p=1975"},"modified":"2015-12-26T12:55:29","modified_gmt":"2015-12-26T18:55:29","slug":"swift-on-linux","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev.iachieved.it\/iachievedit\/swift-on-linux\/","title":{"rendered":"Swift on Linux!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Update!<\/b> If you have the Swift compiler on your Linux box already, head on over to our tutorial<\/a> on building Swift applications to run on Linux. If you don’t have one, come and grab it with apt-get<\/code> from here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

On December 3, 2015 Apple made good on its promise to open source<\/a> Swift<\/a>, their new language for development on Apple platforms. Swift has quickly risen in popularity and folks are developing Mac, iOS, WatchOS, and now tvOS apps with it.<\/p>\n

While I enjoy developing in the Apple ecosystem and writing iOS apps, my first love will always be writing software for Unix systems (please don’t post a comment reminding me that OS X is a Unix). So while I’m excited about the fact that Swift is now open source, I’m more excited about the ramifications of that fact, primarily inroads Swift can make into the server room, operations environments, and IoT<\/a> devices.<\/p>\n

Swift on Ubuntu<\/h2>\n

Apple has made available all of the Swift source code available on Github<\/a>, and even included instructions for building it on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. I tried it, and while I did get it to compile, it isn’t quite polished yet in terms of “easy installation.” Fortunately if you search around you will eventually find this page<\/a> for easier installation.<\/p>\n

So, here we go, the iAchieved.it quick start guide for Swift on Linux, though its fairer to call it Swift on Ubuntu for now.<\/p>\n

Step 1. Get the Package<\/b><\/p>\n

Go to the download page<\/a> and grab the version appropriate for your Ubuntu version, either 14.04 or 15.10. I’m going to get the 14.04 version and save it to my \/usr\/local\/archive<\/code> directory where I keep tarballs.<\/p>\n

\r\nsudo mkdir \/usr\/local\/archive\r\ncd \/usr\/local\/archive\r\nsudo wget https:\/\/swift.org\/builds\/ubuntu1404\/swift-2.2-SNAPSHOT-2015-12-01-b\/swift-2.2-SNAPSHOT-2015-12-01-b-ubuntu14.04.tar.gz\r\n<\/pre>\n
December 13 Update:<\/b>  Copy\/paste is great, but there are new builds coming out every other week from Apple.  Double-check the latest development snapshots<\/a> before your wget<\/code>.<\/p>\n
Step 2.  Unpack<\/b><\/p>\n
Like \/usr\/local\/archive<\/code> is a convention I use, I am also picky about where vendor software is installed and typically use the \/opt\/provider<\/i><\/code> convention, which I’ll do here.<\/p>\n
\r\ncd \/opt\r\nsudo mkdir apple\r\ncd apple\r\nsudo tar -xzf \/usr\/local\/archive\/swift-2.2-SNAPSHOT-2015-12-01-b-ubuntu14.04.tar.gz\r\n<\/pre>\n
This will leave us with a directory named swift-2.2-SNAPSHOT-2015-12-01-b-ubuntu14.04<\/code> in \/opt\/apple<\/code>.  <\/p>\n
Step 3.  Add it to your PATH<\/b><\/p>\n
The directory structure Apple chose within is a typical usr<\/code> structure with the Swift compiler in usr\/bin<\/code>.  Let’s update our path now to pick up the compiler.  In your shell’s rc-file update your PATH<\/code> environment variable to include \/opt\/apple\/swift-2.2-SNAPSHOT-2015-12-01-b-ubuntu14.04<\/code>, like this:<\/p>\n
\r\n# User configuration\r\n  export PATH=\"\/usr\/local\/sbin:\/usr\/local\/bin:\/usr\/sbin:\/usr\/bin:\/sbin:\/bin:\/usr\/games:\/usr\/local\/games:\/opt\/apple\/swift-2.2-SNAPSHOT-2015-12-01-b-ubuntu14.04\/usr\/bin\"\r\n<\/pre>\n
Reload your rc file (I use . ~\/.zshrc<\/code>) and type which swift<\/code>.  You should see something like this:<\/p>\n
\r\n# which swift\r\n\/opt\/apple\/swift-2.2-SNAPSHOT-2015-12-01-b-ubuntu14.04\/usr\/bin\/swift\r\n<\/pre>\n
Step 4.  Optional!  Emacs Goodness<\/b><\/p>\n
When developing on the Mac I like Xcode.  On a Linux box, emacs<\/a> is the only editor for me.  Since there is swift-mode<\/a> available out there I naturally wanted to use it, but it turns out it only supports Emacs 24.4 and higher, so we need to install it on Trusty (14.04).  Luckily someone out there has a PPA<\/a> available for it:<\/p>\n
\r\nsudo apt-get remove -y emacs24\r\nsudo apt-add-repository ppa:andreas-h\/emacs\r\nsudo apt-get update\r\nsudo apt-get install -y emacs24\r\n<\/pre>\n
Edit your ~\/.emacs.d\/init.el<\/code> Emacs configuration file and add something like<\/p>\n
\r\n(require 'package)\r\n(package-initialize)\r\n(add-to-list 'package-archives '(\"melpa\" . \"https:\/\/melpa.org\/packages\/\"))\r\n<\/pre>\n
Launch emacs and using M-x package-refresh-contents<\/code> to pull in the packages from the MELPA repository, and then M-x package-install<\/code> to install the swift-mode<\/code> package.  <\/p>\n
Step 5.  Try it out!<\/b><\/p>\n
We’re not going to use the REPL function right now, but will compile everything together.  First, you may need to install some dependencies if you don’t already have them:<\/p>\n
\r\nsudo apt-get install clang libicu-dev\r\n<\/pre>\n
Warning!<\/b>  After an hour or two browsing around I discovered that the current version of Foundation<\/b> released with Swift for Linux doesn’t have a lot of items implemented.  For example, the status page<\/a> currently states (as of December 5, 2015) that NSURLSession<\/code> isn’t implemented and that NSURL<\/code> is “mostly” implemented.  Mostly doesn’t include using init(URL:)<\/code> apparently!<\/p>\n
\r\nfatal error: init(URL:) is not yet implemented: file Foundation\/NSObjCRuntime.swift, line 64\r\n<\/pre>\n
If you take a look at the new Swift Package Manager<\/a> being developed, you can see in the source code where low-level code for routines like popen<\/code> is being developed to communicate with Github for downloading repositories.  Even NSTask<\/code> isn’t implemented!<\/p>\n
Until these Foundation classes are implemented it might be worth waiting a bit before trying to really do much with Swift on Linux.  Our sample code just shows a basic example of using main.swift<\/code> and a class file to calculate the area of a rectangle.  Boring stuff!<\/p>\n
In a file called main.swift<\/code> (this name is important as it defines to Swift the entry point of your application, like main()<\/code> in C):<\/p>\n
\r\nlet s = Rectangle(base:5, height:6)\r\nprint(\"The area of the rectangle is \\(s.area()).\")\r\n<\/pre>\n
Now in a file called rectangle.swift<\/code>:<\/p>\n
\r\nclass Rectangle {\r\n    var base:Int\r\n    var height:Int\r\n    \r\n    init(base:Int, height:Int) {\r\n        self.base = base\r\n        self.height = height\r\n    }\r\n\r\n    func area() -> Int {\r\n        return self.base * self.height\r\n    }\r\n}\r\n<\/pre>\n
\"Swift<\/a>
Swift on Linux!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Compile it with the swiftc<\/code> compiler, which should now be in your path.<\/p>\n
\r\nswiftc main.swift rectangle.swift\r\n<\/pre>\n
And of course, run it!<\/p>\n
\r\n# .\/main\r\nThe area of the rectangle is 30.\r\n<\/pre>\n
Conclusion<\/h2>\n
There’s not a lot one can do right now with Swift on a Linux box.  This will rapidly change as Foundation gets built out and others come in and begin developing packages.  One should continue to monitor the download page<\/a> to keep track of updates and keep an eye on the status of Foundation.  As classes such as NSTask<\/code> and NSURLSession<\/code> are added we should see folks exploring using Swift as a “server language”.  For me, I can’t wait!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Update! If you have the Swift compiler on your Linux box already, head on over to our tutorial on building Swift applications to run on Linux. If you don’t have one, come and grab it with apt-get from here. On December 3, 2015 Apple made good on its promise to open source Swift, their new […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-linux","category-swift"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.iachieved.it\/iachievedit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1975"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.iachieved.it\/iachievedit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.iachieved.it\/iachievedit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.iachieved.it\/iachievedit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.iachieved.it\/iachievedit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1975"}],"version-history":[{"count":25,"href":"https:\/\/dev.iachieved.it\/iachievedit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1975\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2033,"href":"https:\/\/dev.iachieved.it\/iachievedit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1975\/revisions\/2033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.iachieved.it\/iachievedit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.iachieved.it\/iachievedit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.iachieved.it\/iachievedit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}