14 DAY TRIAL // The Swift project has officially landed on three more Linux distributions in addition to the two platforms that were already supported.
More specifically, users are now provided with downloadable toolchain and Docker images for Ubuntu 20.04, CentOS 8, and Amazon Linux 2.
Previously, only Ubuntu 16.04 and 18.04 were the only Linux distributions supported by Swift.
The team working on the Swift project explains that more Linux distributions would be added in the coming months, albeit for now, no specifics are available on this and further news on this front is expected to be shared as the work on the project advances.
“Linux build Dockerfiles are managed in Swift’s Docker repository with the goal of evolving them in the open with the community. Our plan is to continue and grow the number of Linux distributions we support, with CentOS 7, Debian and Fedora the most likely candidates to be added next,” the dev team explains in a blog post.
Swift for Windows
The official announcement on Swift coming to more Linux distributions was originally shared in late March when the team also confirmed that the programming language would also land on Windows.
“Swift 5.3 is a release meant to include significant quality and performance enhancements. In addition, this release will expand the number of platforms where Swift is available and supported, notably adding support for Windows and additional Linux distributions,” the announcement read (emphasis is ours).
The most recent version of Swift at the time of writing is 5.2.3 and is dated April 29. However, Swift 5.3 snapshots have also been published earlier this month for Xcode, Ubuntu 18.04, and Ubuntu 16.04. The snapshots, however, aren’t official releases, as they’re more like betas that developers can try out in advance before a new major version is announced.