Swift Package Index joins Apple

https://swiftpackageindex.com/blog/swift-package-index-joins-apple

by JDevlieghere • 29 days ago

235 82 29 days ago

jshier3• 29 days ago

Not optimistic here. While I'm glad the SPI guys are getting paid (that is, a full time job), Apple is pretty bad at open source and developer services both, and they explicitly call out developer identity as a future direction, which doesn't fill me with hope.

SoKamil• 29 days ago

This acquisition sounds like a sign that Apple wants to get better on that front.

jshier3• 29 days ago

That's a pretty low bar, and doesn't necessarily mean "good".

marcelox86• 29 days ago

I see the opposite, they have a lot of oss projects nowadays and most of their new, interesting stuff is getting open sourced too, a la Microsoft

jshier3• 29 days ago

Simply being open doesn't make them good open source projects. Luckily the SPI shouldn't need to conform to Apple's release schedule, and should operate mostly independently, so the worst aspects of Apple's open source projects will be less of an issue.

RobMurray3• 29 days ago

I tried to get a personal developer account (I'm already a developer through an organisation). The app required a Driver's license as the only accepted ID. I don't drive because I'm blind. They did a screen share and talked me through applying on the web site. It failed. They never gave a reason and ignored me when I asked for one. They just said

"Hello Robert, Thank you for your patience while I awaited a response from our operations team.

Upon review, we have found that we can’t verify your identity with the Apple Developer app or provide further assistance with the Apple Account for Apple developer programs.

You can still take advantage of great content using your Apple Account in Xcode to develop and test apps on your own device. Learn more about Xcode development.

I do apologise that I was not of more help to you in this situation but wish you the best of luck for the future. "

They will destroy the developer experience when they add identity and signing.

lenerdenator• 29 days ago

I'm not sure about the laws where you're at, but to me, this sounds like something they should have to accommodate you on.

LoganDark2• 29 days ago

My driver's license is in a form factor Apple cannot scan. A few months ago, I tried to get it scanned four times (with the UI telling me various versions of "your ID is too blurry" / "there was a technical issue") before Apple just blocked me from applying for the developer program.

Their support gave me the exact same template: "After reviewing your account details, it looks like we can’t verify your identity with the Apple Developer app or provide further assistance with the Apple Account for Apple developer programs."

I was only unblocked recently (surprisingly -- I thought I was banned forever), and so I decided to try applying with passport instead. That got further, as instead of saying my ID image was blurry, it said "ID Verification Rejected".

I am in contact with developer support right now and they told me that one of my devices or phone numbers was registered with another developer account, but they haven't told me which one (only to "remove phone numbers and devices that you don’t own" -- which isn't applicable as I own all of them).

They're taking 4+ days to reply each time though, which is super frustrating.

socalgal2• 29 days ago

Not only is Apple bad at open source, they ban participating on open source projects outside of work.

https://web.archive.org/web/20200421143520/https://twitter.c...

peterspath3• 29 days ago

Well I was thinking about making a competitor to SPI because they only support GitHub repo’s.

This news makes it easy. I’m starting the engines on this…

rahkiin• 29 days ago

Or send in a PR for gitlab/… support?

peterspath3• 29 days ago

They did not want that and discouraged it.

bigyabai2• 29 days ago

Merging a PR with Apple is harder than merging into the left side of a six-lane highway during rush hour.

unfunco• 29 days ago

Working on an idea after it has been Sherlocked is a bold choice.

nish__• 29 days ago

What does Sherlocked mean?

esskay• 29 days ago

It's Apple, theres a high chance they'll just delete it and pretend it never existed. They've got a pretty consistent reputation for this now. Dark Sky, PrimeSense, Drive.ai, Beddit, Topsy, NextVR, Fleetsmith, FingerWorks, to name a few.

trollbridge• 29 days ago

Please get in touch, as I've wanted this to support Gitlab (et al) for a while, and I'm nervous about the future of SPI now.

frou_dh• 29 days ago

Back when I was following Swift, I was a bit confused by there being 2 distinct sites that seemed to be pretty much the same thing:

- https://swiftpackageregistry.com

- https://swiftpackageindex.com

jadar• 29 days ago

I've never heard of the first one!

aaronvg• 29 days ago

kind of surprised Swift didn't launch with this by default, built in-house

giobox2• 29 days ago

I'm always surprised as well when new languages targeting widespread use launch without an official one. Dotnet/C#, Go and other languages that come batteries included with the package manager built into some kind of compiler/SDK binary, make the out of the box experience so much smoother, and the community hasn't fragmented nearly as much as say Java, Python and JS have into competing third party package management and project build tools.

Everyone in the Go community more or less uses the same Go modules support built into the SDK binary, much like how almost the entire DotNet community uses the NuGet package manager support built into the dotnet SDK binary. There are no extra dependencies to grab your project dependencies and build it.

My experiences in those langauges is that there is so much less debate over tooling, and people just get work done. No one in DotNet is waging an equivelent holy war about Gradle vs Maven etc...

I'm all for choices, but the languages who have made package management a first class citizen in their SDKs tend to be the languages I've enjoyed working in the most. I think package management tooling is a critical piece of developer ergonomics.

People used to joke a lot about how JS has a new framework every week, but I feel that way about Python build tooling! I've now had to use uv, poetry, pipenv, hatch...

eddythompson803• 29 days ago

I find your choice of examples (dotnet and go) baffling to me. Both enjoyed a very long life (8-10 years) past “1.0” before getting a standard package manager. The other examples, Java, python and JS are significantly older than Go (and even dotnet). Python and JS also had a significantly different intended use (scripting) than where they ended. Expectations of a language and its ecosystem changed. The compiler, linker, build system, package manager, LSP, linter, formatter, debugger, and plenty more are expected of any new language now.

rTX5CMRXIfFG• 28 days ago

Because a package index isn’t actually core to a programming language, and specifically with Swift, Apple tried to ship as many of the necessary types as possible in the standard library

eddythompson803• 29 days ago

Apple has something with Swift similar to what Google has with Go. The language has a lot of desirable features for server development very much like Go and Rust. Especially when compared to Java and C#.

It makes sense for them to build their services using Swift instead of something like Go and the Swift-on-server team has been doing a lot of work to get swift in a usable state on Linux. Having a thriving opensource (starting with a package index) makes a lot of sense to them for that.

My only problem with Swift is personal taste and experience. I tried it on linux few times (admittingly few years ago now) and generally I wasn't a fan. Go and Rust solve all the problems that Swift could have solved for me, so I didn't bother. But just like node got an entire class of developers into server side programming, Swift could be apples approach to get their iOS and MacOS developers a way to easily write server side code in swift as well

frizlab4• 29 days ago

Swift on Linux has changed since a few years ago. A lot.

I prefer Swift over rust as it has the same memory-safety guarantees with a much more approachable syntax, and is generally easier to work with.

hocuspocus• 29 days ago

Easy and approachable sound pretty subjective to say the least; feature and syntax wise, Swift has become an absolute monster of a language. Rust's tooling and ecosystem are ahead and these points matter to me more than the raw syntax in the age of LLMs.

tialaramex2• 29 days ago

The same condition is still true as the first time I was told "Swift on Linux" is somehow a first class experience:

Documentation for the standard library is presently hosted on the Apple Developer website.

Sure enough, by Apple policy, the documentation pretends no non-Apple platforms exist. What happens for an API which could be different if your system isn't fruit-flavoured? They don't care and won't talk about it.

Is the feature I need available for this Linux device? No idea, but it does work with watchOS and tvOS made by Apple...

dhosek• 29 days ago

Isn’t there a performance cost though with runtime binding of functions? (I’ve not looked too closely at Swift since the first couple of years when Objective C compatibility was essential, so maybe that’s less of a default than it was in the early days).

dragon-hn• 29 days ago

I guess that explains why Dave Verwer handed off ownership of the iOS Dev Weekly newsletter.

Always great to see community members see success.

lsllc• 29 days ago

Yes, congrats to Dave on two successes!

daveverwer2• 29 days ago

Thank you both!

ChrisMarshallNY2• 29 days ago

Glad to see it.

I like the SPM, but it definitely has its "rough edges."

Having an index like this, is great.

However, I guarantee that there will be some caterwaulin', if Apple decides to regulate which packages get indexed (which I think should happen, as it's now an official Apple brand).

jagged-chisel• 29 days ago

… if Apple decides to regulate which packages get indexed

I have mixed feelings here. If they disallow too much, they’ll alienate too many projects and there will be an exodus of non-Apple platform Swift devs.

I guess it doesn’t really gate pulling any dependencies you want, but too much and/or the wrong kind of filtering (e.g. removing non-Apple alternatives to core Apple libraries) would not look (nor feel) good.

ChrisMarshallNY2• 29 days ago

Agreed. They do have a nasty habit of dinging competitors to Apple apps, in the App Store.

It would not be a good thing, if they did that, here.

It would be interesting to see what they do with some of my packages.

I release alternative UI views, and Apple is infamous for wanting to force all developers into conforming to their UX.

It would make me sad, if they blocked things like these:

https://github.com/RiftValleySoftware/RVS_Spinner

https://github.com/RiftValleySoftware/RVS_Checkbox

https://github.com/RiftValleySoftware/RVS_RetroLEDDisplay

classified• 29 days ago

And there I was hoping the Swift ecosystem could emancipate itself from Apple instead of getting eaten up.

meszmate• 29 days ago

Back when I was working with Swift, I always thought Swift Package Index was made by Apple

ms_by_pd• 29 days ago

Good this is useful

thedreammachine• 29 days ago

I wonder if package indexes become more important in our new day-to-days with LLMs, not less.

We might be browsing less, but the models need a source of truth for package metadata, etc.

rkunde• 28 days ago

I wonder if this means we’ll get an official registry now. The failed partnership with Github was announced 7 years ago.

Swift Package Index joins Apple

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