Apple-enrolled programmers have a new and updated Swift language to use for coding their iOS and Mac OS apps

Feb 10, 2015 08:39 GMT  ·  By

A rising star among programming languages, Apple’s Swift has reached version 1.2 and includes a much-improved compiler and other notable enhancements.

Apple offers the highlights of this release on the Swift blog, while the release notes accompanying Xcode 6.3 beta offer a more detailed look at the changes.

Engineered for stability

It seems Apple is not only working hard to make its consumer-oriented software more stable, but also the developer tools it offers to a sea of programmers whose apps enrich the iPhone and the iPad.

Swift 1.2 includes a slightly re-engineered Compiler that promises to be vastly more stable while also capable of yielding improved performance at every step.

The changes extend to Xcode itself, where source files that haven’t changed will no longer be re-compiled by default, debug builds produce binaries that run considerably faster, diagnostics offer clearer error messages with new Fix-it popups, and more.

Better performance with traditional bug fixing

Apple promises that the most common crashes occurring in the compiler have been addressed, and that SourceKit warnings within the Xcode editor should also be much scarcer.

The Mac maker extends a thank you to the patient developer community, saying it appreciates all the bug filing efforts. Apple says users should expect many of the most frequent nuisances to have disappeared.

“Swift 1.2 is a major step forward for both the language and the tools. It does include some source-incompatible changes that require updates to your code, so Xcode 6.3 includes a migrator to help automate the process,” the company adds.

Registrants to the iOS and Mac developer programs can immediately download the new Xcode 6.3 beta - which includes support for iOS 8.3 development, Yosemite development, and Apple Watch development - along with the new Swift 1.2, and start coding with these new features and enhancements today.

To migrate existing code to the new toolset, developers are instructed to employ the Edit menu and choose Convert > To Swift 1.2.