When is ABI going to be released?

Anyone have a roadmap or clue when this will happen?


I'm so ready to fork my own version of swift, it isn't funny.

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Might be a better question put to swift.org.


Pls. advise if you are currently taking guesses. I've got a baggie full here that are near their best by date.

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Might be a better question put to swift.org.


Pls. advise if you are currently taking guesses. I've got a baggie full here that are near their best by date.

Anyone have a roadmap or clue when this will happen?

ABI stability is an expected feature of Swift 5. You can learn more about the Swift 5 goals and rough schedule on this page. You should also check out the Swift ABI Stability Manifesto and the ABI Dashboard.

I’m curious as to what benefits you expect from ABI stability. Please elaborate.

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Quinn “The Eskimo!”
Apple Developer Relations, Developer Technical Support, Core OS/Hardware

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With Swift 5, Would it be possible to create a static library (not a framework, just a static lib) that can be linked with swift apps written in different Swift 5+ versions?

See my response to your other post.

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Quinn “The Eskimo!”
Apple Developer Relations, Developer Technical Support, Core OS/Hardware

let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@apple.com"

Supposedly "Expected release date: Early 2019"


I doubt it though, if there will ever be a formal released ABI. Once you have an ABI, you have to stick to it and not break stuff essentially. Then other companies can specially write code without needing or wanting approval from cupertino. No sane company would dump money into a moving target. Well ok, microsoft might but they blunder nearly everything they touch.

>> I doubt it though, if there will ever be a formal released ABI.


Why do you say that, given that the Swift team is actively and publicly working on ABI stability?


>> Once you have an ABI, you have to stick to it …


Objective-C has a defined ABI, and sticks to it. (Actually, there are several, since Apple uses CPU architecture changes as an opportunity to change ABIs. That leverages the fact that different CPU architectures need difference executable images anyway.)


Swift could follow the same approach, but the actual ABI stability effort is a bit more ambitious. The aim is to provide ABI stability in a way that allows APIs to change in some well-defined directions. That's making it take longer than expected (I think it was first slated for Swift 3), but there's no doubt that there will be some kind of ABI stability at some point.