I've got an iOS project that I've been working on for some months. Just recently, I started seeing a compiler error to the effect that "Referencing instance requires that X conforms to Equatable". It shows up in places where you'd expect something to be Equatable, such as the argument to firstIndexOf: on an array.
The class in question is written in Swift, but descents from an Objective-C base class. I know there are some issues with how Equatable interacts with Obj-C but I think I've done it right. The base class extends NSObject, and the subclass implements both the isEqual function and the static == function. (I don't think the latter is necessary but I included it just in case).
I've tried explicitly including "Equatable" in the definition of the subclass but the compiler rejects this as "Redundant conformance to protocol". I'm not exactly sure how that works since NSObject doesn't extend Equatable but I guess Swift considers them equivalent.
Here's where things get super weird though. Xcode still builds and runs the project despite the compiler error, and the code runs, and it works. I even put a breakpoint in the isEqual function to make sure it was getting called. Also, when I clean and rebuild the project, the compiler error often disappears for some time, reappearing hours or days later. So I think this must be some kind of bug in Xcode or Swift itself.
What do you think?
Frank
