CHANGELOG.md

Note: This is in reverse chronological order, so newer entries are added to the top.

Swift 5.8

• [#5874]

  In packages using tools version 5.8 or later, Foundation is no longer implicitly imported into package manifests. If Foundation APIs are used, the module needs to be imported explicitly.

• #5728

  In packages that specify resources using tools version 5.8 or later, the generated resource bundle accessor will import Foundation.Bundle for its own implementation only. Clients of such packages therefore no longer silently import Foundation, preventing inadvertent use of Foundation extensions to standard library APIs, which helps to avoid unexpected code size increases.

Swift 5.7

• SE-0292

  SwiftPM can now resolve dependencies from a server compliant with the package registry server API defined in SE-0292.

• SE-0339

  Module aliases can now be defined in the package manifest to disambiguate between modules with the same name originating from different packages.

• #4119

  Add a --disable-testable-imports flag to swift test with which tests are built without the testability feature (import @testable disabled).

• #4131

  Update to manifest API to make it impossible to create an invalid build settings condition.

• #4135

  Enable linker dead stripping for all platforms. This can be disabled with --disable-dead-strip

• #4168

  Update to manifest API to make it impossible to create an invalid target dependency condition.

Swift 5.6

• SE-0303

  Package plugins of the type buildTool can now be declared in packages that specify a tools version of 5.6 or later, and can be invoked using the swift build command.

• SE-0332

  Package plugins of the type command can now be declared in packages that specify a tools version of 5.6 or later, and can be invoked using the swift package subcommand.

• #3649

  Semantic version dependencies can now be resolved against Git tag names that contain only major and minor version identifiers. A tag with the form X.Y will be treated as X.Y.0. This improves compatibility with existing repositories.

• #3486

  Both parsing and comparison of semantic versions now strictly follow the Semantic Versioning 2.0.0 specification.

  The parsing logic now treats the first "-" in a version string as the delimiter between the version core and the pre-release identifiers, only if there is no preceding "+". Otherwise, it's treated as part of a build metadata identifier.

  The comparison logic now ignores build metadata identifiers, and treats 2 semantic versions as equal if and only if they're equal in their major, minor, patch versions and pre-release identifiers.

• #3641

  Soft deprecate .package(name:, url:) dependency syntax in favor of .package(url:), given that an explicit name attribute is no longer needed for target dependencies lookup.

• #3641

  Adding a dependency requirement can now be done with the convenience initializer .package(url: String, exact: Version).

• #3641

  Dependency requirement enum calling convention is deprecated in favour of labeled argument:

  • .package(url: String, .branch(String)) -> .package(url: String, branch: String)
  • .package(url: String, .revision(String)) -> .package(url: String, revision: String)
  • .package(url: String, .exact(Version)) -> .package(url: String, exact: Version)

• #3717

  Introduce a second version of Package.resolved file format which more accurately captures package identity.

• #3890

  To increase the security of packages, SwiftPM performs trust on first use (TOFU) validation. The fingerprint of a package is now being recorded when the package is first downloaded from a Git repository or package registry. Subsequent downloads must have fingerpints matching previous recorded values, otherwise it would result in build warnings or failures depending on settings.

• #3670, #3901, #3942

  Location of configuration files (including mirror file) have changed to accomodate new features that require more robust configuration directories structure, such as SE-0292:

  • <project>/.swiftpm/config (mirrors file) was moved to <project>/.swiftpm/configuration/mirrors.json. SwiftPM 5.6 will automatically copy the file from the old location to the new one and emit a warning to prompt the user to delete the file from the old location.
  • ~/.swiftpm/config/collections.json (collections file) was moved to ~/.swiftpm/configuration/collections.json. SwiftPM 5.6 will automatically copy the file from the old location to the new one and emit a warning to prompt the user to delete the file from the old location.

Swift 5.5

• #3410

  In a package that specifies a minimum tools version of 5.5, @main can now be used in a single-source file executable as long as the name of the source file isn't main.swift. To work around special compiler semantics with single-file modules, SwiftPM now passes -parse-as-library when compiling an executable module that contains a single Swift source file whose name is not main.swift.

• #3310

  Adding a dependency requirement can now be done with the convenience initializer .package(url: String, revision: String).

• #3292

  Adding a dependency requirement can now be done with the convenience initializer .package(url: String, branch: String).

• #3280

  A more intuitive .product(name:, package:) target dependency syntax is now accepted, where package is the package identifier as defined by the package URL.

• #3316

  Test targets can now link against executable targets as if they were libraries, so that they can test any data structures or algorithms in them. All the code in the executable except for the main entry point itself is available to the unit test. Separate executables are still linked, and can be tested as a subprocess in the same way as before. This feature is available to tests defined in packages that have a tools version of 5.5 or newer.

Swift 5.4

• #2937

  • Improvements

    Package manifests can now have any combination of leading whitespace characters. This allows more flexibility in formatting the manifests.

    SR-13566 The Swift tools version specification in each manifest file now accepts any combination of horizontal whitespace characters surrounding swift-tools-version, if and only if the specified version ≥ 5.4. For example, //swift-tools-version: 5.4 and // swift-tools-version: 5.4 are valid.

    All Unicode line terminators are now recognized in Package manifests. This ensures correctness in parsing manifests that are edited and/or built on many non-Unix-like platforms that use ASCII or Unicode encodings.

  • API Removal

    ToolsVersionLoader.Error.malformedToolsVersion(specifier: String, currentToolsVersion: ToolsVersion) is replaced by ToolsVersionLoader.Error.malformedToolsVersionSpecification(_ malformation: ToolsVersionSpecificationMalformation).

    ToolsVersionLoader.split(_ bytes: ByteString) -> (versionSpecifier: String?, rest: [UInt8]) and ToolsVersionLoader.regex are together replaced by ToolsVersionLoader.split(_ manifest: String) -> ManifestComponents.

  • Source Breakages for Swift Packages

    The package manager now throws an error if a manifest file contains invalid UTF-8 byte sequences.

Swift 4.2

• SE-0209

  The swiftLanguageVersions property no longer takes its Swift language versions via a freeform Integer array; instead it should be passed as a new SwiftVersion enum array.

• SE-0208

  The Package manifest now accepts a new type of target, systemLibrary. This deprecates "system-module packages" which are now to be included in the packages that require system-installed dependencies.

• SE-0201

  Packages can now specify a dependency as package(path: String) to point to a path on the local filesystem which hosts a package. This will enable interconnected projects to be edited in parallel.

• #1604

  The generate-xcodeproj has a new --watch option to automatically regenerate the Xcode project if changes are detected. This uses the watchman tool to detect filesystem changes.

• Scheme generation has been improved:

  • One scheme containing all regular and test targets of the root package.
  • One scheme per executable target containing the test targets whose dependencies intersect with the dependencies of the exectuable target.

• SR-6978 Packages which mix versions of the form vX.X.X with Y.Y.Y will now be parsed and ordered numerically.

• #1489 A simpler progress bar is now generated for "dumb" terminals.

Swift 4.1

• #1485 Support has been added to automatically generate the LinuxMain files for testing on Linux systems. On a macOS system, run swift test --generate-linuxmain.

• SR-5918 Package manifests that include multiple products with the same name will now throw an error.

Swift 4.0

• The generated Xcode project creates a dummy target which provides autocompletion for the manifest files. The name of the dummy target is in format: <PackageName>PackageDescription.

• --specifier option for swift test is now deprecated. Use --filter instead which supports regex.

Swift 3.0

• SE-0135

  The package manager now supports writing Swift 3.0 specific tags and manifests, in order to support future evolution of the formats used in both cases while still allowing the Swift 3.0 package manager to continue to function.

• SE-0129

  Test modules now must be named with a Tests suffix (e.g., Foo/Tests/BarTests/BarTests.swift). This name also defines the name of the Swift module, replacing the old BarTestSuite module name.

• It is no longer necessary to run swift build before running swift test (it will always regenerates the build manifest when necessary). In addition, it now accepts (and requires) the same -Xcc, etc. options as are used with swift build.

• The Package initializer now requires the name: parameter.