1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:02,680 So we had a YouTube comment this week, 2 00:00:02,680 --> 00:00:03,980 which asked us a question, 3 00:00:03,980 --> 00:00:07,080 which I think we should kick off this week's show 4 00:00:07,080 --> 00:00:08,740 by answering it. 5 00:00:08,740 --> 00:00:15,180 So the comment was from Encapsulatio, 6 00:00:15,180 --> 00:00:18,740 or Encapsulatio, I'm not quite sure how to say that. 7 00:00:18,740 --> 00:00:23,240 And it's about Swift on Linux and Windows. 8 00:00:23,240 --> 00:00:26,440 So we talked a little bit about Swift on Windows, 9 00:00:26,440 --> 00:00:28,880 and I think probably a little bit about Swift on Linux 10 00:00:28,880 --> 00:00:30,780 in the last episode. 11 00:00:30,780 --> 00:00:34,240 And this comment says, 12 00:00:34,240 --> 00:00:36,200 "Does Swift work on Linux and Windows 13 00:00:36,200 --> 00:00:37,660 just as well as on Mac 14 00:00:37,660 --> 00:00:39,820 when it comes to a developer experience? 15 00:00:39,820 --> 00:00:42,500 What about developing apps that work on Android? 16 00:00:42,500 --> 00:00:46,640 Can you talk about cross-platform development in Swift 17 00:00:46,640 --> 00:00:50,420 and also cross-platform compilation of Swift software?" 18 00:00:50,420 --> 00:00:53,680 So I think the answer to that is yes, we can. 19 00:00:53,680 --> 00:00:54,560 (laughing) 20 00:00:54,560 --> 00:00:56,420 Well, we can certainly try. 21 00:00:57,760 --> 00:01:00,080 Well, we can certainly try, yeah, exactly. 22 00:01:00,080 --> 00:01:01,880 So let's try, shall we? 23 00:01:01,880 --> 00:01:03,120 - Yeah, because can. 24 00:01:03,120 --> 00:01:04,840 Have we actually? 25 00:01:04,840 --> 00:01:08,760 Have you made any attempts to run Swift on Windows 26 00:01:08,760 --> 00:01:09,920 or Android? 27 00:01:09,920 --> 00:01:11,040 - On Windows, no. 28 00:01:11,040 --> 00:01:13,880 On Android, no. 29 00:01:13,880 --> 00:01:16,520 On Linux, kind of. 30 00:01:16,520 --> 00:01:17,720 - Yeah, I feel more comfortable 31 00:01:17,720 --> 00:01:20,760 about that side of the fence. 32 00:01:20,760 --> 00:01:22,720 - Yeah, and I think that's probably potentially 33 00:01:22,720 --> 00:01:24,640 where we should focus, 34 00:01:24,640 --> 00:01:28,040 because, and I do think that the question, 35 00:01:28,040 --> 00:01:29,680 'cause there was a follow-up post afterwards 36 00:01:29,680 --> 00:01:32,240 and it did talk about Linux specifically. 37 00:01:32,240 --> 00:01:35,760 So I think the question is mainly around Linux 38 00:01:35,760 --> 00:01:37,600 rather than Windows and Android, 39 00:01:37,600 --> 00:01:40,600 but we should potentially touch on those too. 40 00:01:40,600 --> 00:01:44,760 - Well, the good news is if we talk about Linux, 41 00:01:44,760 --> 00:01:49,160 I guess a lot of it will apply to Windows 42 00:01:49,160 --> 00:01:52,000 because as we probably get into it fairly quickly, 43 00:01:52,000 --> 00:01:55,200 the primary editor on Linux is gonna be VS Code, 44 00:01:55,200 --> 00:01:58,160 which is a first-class citizen on Windows, right? 45 00:01:58,160 --> 00:01:59,120 - Exactly, yeah. 46 00:01:59,120 --> 00:02:02,040 And in terms of developer experience, 47 00:02:02,040 --> 00:02:05,120 which is what this question is primarily about, 48 00:02:05,120 --> 00:02:09,800 I think that is really all we probably need to say. 49 00:02:09,800 --> 00:02:12,880 As far as I know, VS Code works on Linux. 50 00:02:12,880 --> 00:02:14,200 It certainly works on Windows. 51 00:02:14,200 --> 00:02:15,800 It definitely works also on Mac. 52 00:02:17,280 --> 00:02:22,280 - So there is a relatively official these days 53 00:02:22,280 --> 00:02:26,200 extension for VS Code, 54 00:02:26,200 --> 00:02:29,400 which I think is under the stewardship 55 00:02:29,400 --> 00:02:31,200 of the server work group, is it? 56 00:02:31,200 --> 00:02:33,360 Or is it completely independent? 57 00:02:33,360 --> 00:02:34,200 - It is. 58 00:02:34,200 --> 00:02:37,480 I think it has moved into the official servers, 59 00:02:37,480 --> 00:02:40,600 Swift account and is officially maintained, I believe. 60 00:02:40,600 --> 00:02:41,760 - Yeah, I thought so, yeah. 61 00:02:41,760 --> 00:02:43,480 - And the maintainer is Adam Fowler. 62 00:02:43,480 --> 00:02:45,920 We should mention him because he's done a lot of work there 63 00:02:45,920 --> 00:02:47,480 to make that really nice. 64 00:02:47,480 --> 00:02:49,960 - An enormous amount of work, yeah. 65 00:02:49,960 --> 00:02:54,400 And yeah, so that extension is available 66 00:02:54,400 --> 00:02:59,160 in the VS Code extensions store, if it's called the store, 67 00:02:59,160 --> 00:03:01,080 but whatever you install the extensions from, 68 00:03:01,080 --> 00:03:02,360 it's available there. 69 00:03:02,360 --> 00:03:05,760 And it comes along with a whole load of stuff by default. 70 00:03:05,760 --> 00:03:09,080 So it hooks into the LSP, 71 00:03:09,080 --> 00:03:12,280 which is the language server protocol, is it? 72 00:03:12,280 --> 00:03:13,120 - Yes. 73 00:03:13,120 --> 00:03:15,240 - Yes. 74 00:03:15,240 --> 00:03:16,760 - We've done our homework. 75 00:03:16,760 --> 00:03:21,760 - As you can tell, this podcast is excruciatingly researched. 76 00:03:21,760 --> 00:03:24,200 (laughing) 77 00:03:24,200 --> 00:03:27,800 Language server protocol, yeah. 78 00:03:27,800 --> 00:03:32,040 So that gives you things like completion and highlighting 79 00:03:32,040 --> 00:03:33,280 and that kind of stuff. 80 00:03:33,280 --> 00:03:37,960 And then there's also some extras in that extension 81 00:03:37,960 --> 00:03:42,680 that do, for example, when you open up a Swift package 82 00:03:42,680 --> 00:03:47,680 with VS Code, it does a dependency resolution for you. 83 00:03:47,680 --> 00:03:49,320 There are also some commands in there 84 00:03:49,320 --> 00:03:54,320 that you can build and test your package. 85 00:03:54,320 --> 00:03:57,840 So I would say it's a pretty good experience. 86 00:03:57,840 --> 00:03:59,560 In fact, I would say it's actually getting on 87 00:03:59,560 --> 00:04:04,560 for a great experience to develop Swift in VS Code 88 00:04:04,560 --> 00:04:07,360 with that extension installed. 89 00:04:07,360 --> 00:04:11,760 And of course you can then do that on all those platforms, 90 00:04:11,760 --> 00:04:13,680 Linux, Windows, and Mac. 91 00:04:13,680 --> 00:04:16,600 - Yeah, and just to extend that a bit, VS Code, 92 00:04:16,600 --> 00:04:19,000 I've been using it a couple of times 93 00:04:19,000 --> 00:04:23,280 because while we do development mainly on the Mac 94 00:04:23,280 --> 00:04:28,280 for the SPI server project, we deploy on Linux. 95 00:04:28,280 --> 00:04:33,280 So we sometimes have the need to actually run the, 96 00:04:33,280 --> 00:04:35,640 or compile and test on Linux, 97 00:04:35,640 --> 00:04:38,800 because sometimes there might be small differences 98 00:04:38,800 --> 00:04:41,520 or things that we're debugging 99 00:04:41,520 --> 00:04:43,480 that might only happen on Linux. 100 00:04:43,480 --> 00:04:46,680 So we have a certain need to actually run it on Linux 101 00:04:46,680 --> 00:04:50,320 ourselves as well, not just when we actually 102 00:04:50,320 --> 00:04:51,800 deploy the server. 103 00:04:51,800 --> 00:04:56,720 And that's when I use VS Code and even Nova recently, 104 00:04:56,720 --> 00:04:59,880 because that also has now a Swift extension 105 00:04:59,880 --> 00:05:01,960 with LSP support. 106 00:05:01,960 --> 00:05:05,240 So while it doesn't have the test runner stuff, 107 00:05:05,240 --> 00:05:09,880 it does have the autocomplete and the pop-up stuff 108 00:05:09,880 --> 00:05:12,080 for the autocomplete, so that's quite nice. 109 00:05:12,080 --> 00:05:18,040 And VS Code brings in addition the little test runner UI, 110 00:05:18,040 --> 00:05:21,480 like on the Mac you have these little diamonds 111 00:05:21,480 --> 00:05:22,400 that you can click. 112 00:05:22,400 --> 00:05:27,800 I believe that also works on Linux. 113 00:05:27,800 --> 00:05:31,560 I don't try that often because of the nature of things 114 00:05:31,560 --> 00:05:34,800 I tend to do when I get to that point, 115 00:05:34,800 --> 00:05:37,880 but I believe that is now supported and should be working 116 00:05:37,880 --> 00:05:40,680 so you can run tests that way individually 117 00:05:40,680 --> 00:05:42,160 or just all of them. 118 00:05:42,160 --> 00:05:44,000 That's quite nice. 119 00:05:44,000 --> 00:05:46,280 - And I think it is worth saying that, 120 00:05:46,280 --> 00:05:48,200 as far as I know, both of our experience 121 00:05:48,200 --> 00:05:50,840 with running this extension in VS Code 122 00:05:50,840 --> 00:05:55,200 is running the extension in the Mac version of VS Code. 123 00:05:55,200 --> 00:05:58,040 And as you say, you can run those developer containers 124 00:05:58,040 --> 00:06:03,040 to run the software that you're working on 125 00:06:03,080 --> 00:06:05,200 under Linux inside a container. 126 00:06:05,200 --> 00:06:10,200 But certainly I haven't tried all of this in VS Code 127 00:06:10,200 --> 00:06:12,040 on different platforms, 128 00:06:12,040 --> 00:06:14,120 although I do believe it all works. 129 00:06:14,120 --> 00:06:16,840 - Yeah, I imagine that might even be a good way 130 00:06:16,840 --> 00:06:18,360 to get started on Windows 131 00:06:18,360 --> 00:06:23,360 while support is probably not there fully. 132 00:06:23,360 --> 00:06:26,600 There was just recently someone said they tried 133 00:06:26,600 --> 00:06:29,400 using Swift on Windows and didn't have a great experience. 134 00:06:29,400 --> 00:06:32,360 And a better experience for now might be 135 00:06:32,360 --> 00:06:35,520 to run the same way we do on the Mac. 136 00:06:35,520 --> 00:06:39,040 You run VS Code and then you run a dev container 137 00:06:39,040 --> 00:06:44,040 with the Swift image of a Swift image 138 00:06:44,040 --> 00:06:46,000 as a Linux container on Windows. 139 00:06:46,000 --> 00:06:48,560 I would imagine that works just the same 140 00:06:48,560 --> 00:06:50,440 as it does on the Mac. 141 00:06:50,440 --> 00:06:51,360 I haven't tried that. 142 00:06:51,360 --> 00:06:54,680 I don't know how good the experience is in Docker 143 00:06:54,680 --> 00:06:56,200 for Windows, but I would imagine 144 00:06:56,200 --> 00:06:57,840 that would work the same way. 145 00:06:57,840 --> 00:07:01,920 - All of the component pieces are certainly available. 146 00:07:01,920 --> 00:07:03,200 - Yeah, yeah, definitely. 147 00:07:03,200 --> 00:07:06,800 So that's certainly probably the easiest way 148 00:07:06,800 --> 00:07:07,800 to get started. 149 00:07:07,800 --> 00:07:10,760 And if you're worried about performance, 150 00:07:10,760 --> 00:07:12,000 that's actually an interesting thing 151 00:07:12,000 --> 00:07:13,000 I found out the other day 152 00:07:13,000 --> 00:07:17,080 because I ran our test suite in a Linux container 153 00:07:17,080 --> 00:07:17,920 on the Mac. 154 00:07:17,920 --> 00:07:21,040 This is an Apple Silicon Mac. 155 00:07:21,040 --> 00:07:23,440 And to my surprise, the tests actually run faster 156 00:07:23,440 --> 00:07:25,920 in the container. 157 00:07:25,920 --> 00:07:29,640 So in Xcode, they run in, I think, like 60 seconds 158 00:07:29,640 --> 00:07:33,160 and in the container, it ran in 40 or 45 159 00:07:33,160 --> 00:07:34,000 or something like that. 160 00:07:34,000 --> 00:07:35,120 It was a noticeable difference. 161 00:07:35,120 --> 00:07:39,000 - I was gonna say, that's quite a significant difference. 162 00:07:39,000 --> 00:07:40,120 - That's why I actually timed it 163 00:07:40,120 --> 00:07:43,000 because I noticed, yeah, it was really, 164 00:07:43,000 --> 00:07:45,720 I posted about it because I was so surprised 165 00:07:45,720 --> 00:07:47,520 that it was so much faster. 166 00:07:47,520 --> 00:07:50,880 I think it might be the terminal output. 167 00:07:50,880 --> 00:07:54,720 So the console in Xcode is pretty slow, I believe. 168 00:07:54,720 --> 00:07:56,960 And I wonder if that's the reason. 169 00:07:56,960 --> 00:08:00,040 I haven't actually tried running it in terminal 170 00:08:00,040 --> 00:08:02,840 on the Mac to see if that makes a difference. 171 00:08:02,840 --> 00:08:05,400 - Well, maybe rather than upgrading my Mac, 172 00:08:05,400 --> 00:08:06,920 I should switch to Linux. 173 00:08:06,920 --> 00:08:09,680 - Well, good luck. 174 00:08:09,680 --> 00:08:11,920 (laughing) 175 00:08:11,920 --> 00:08:17,360 - Yeah, so I think, and I was gonna, 176 00:08:17,360 --> 00:08:18,960 so I'm glad you brought up Nova 177 00:08:18,960 --> 00:08:21,120 because I know you've been using it recently 178 00:08:21,120 --> 00:08:24,880 and I'm glad to hear that at least some of that 179 00:08:24,880 --> 00:08:27,280 is going across to other editors. 180 00:08:27,280 --> 00:08:32,480 I don't know of any others apart from VS Code and Nova. 181 00:08:32,480 --> 00:08:35,600 I mean, almost certainly you can get this working in Emacs 182 00:08:35,600 --> 00:08:38,240 because you can get anything working in Emacs, right? 183 00:08:38,240 --> 00:08:40,480 (laughing) 184 00:08:40,480 --> 00:08:44,040 But I haven't heard of any other editors 185 00:08:44,040 --> 00:08:46,040 that have at least advertised. 186 00:08:46,040 --> 00:08:48,000 I know other editors do use the LSP, 187 00:08:48,000 --> 00:08:51,120 but I haven't heard of any others 188 00:08:51,120 --> 00:08:52,800 kind of advertising support for Swift. 189 00:08:52,800 --> 00:08:55,520 So if you do know of any, 190 00:08:55,520 --> 00:08:59,080 then please drop us a comment either on the YouTube video 191 00:08:59,080 --> 00:09:01,960 or actually I don't think we have comments 192 00:09:01,960 --> 00:09:02,920 on the podcast, do we? 193 00:09:02,920 --> 00:09:05,000 So yeah, if you know of any, 194 00:09:05,000 --> 00:09:06,600 then drop us a comment on the YouTube video. 195 00:09:06,600 --> 00:09:09,800 - Yeah, and I believe that there should be a fair number 196 00:09:09,800 --> 00:09:12,560 because LSP seems to be like the common way 197 00:09:12,560 --> 00:09:14,080 to do this sort of thing these days. 198 00:09:14,080 --> 00:09:17,040 And that should open up support 199 00:09:17,040 --> 00:09:19,200 for quite a number of editors. 200 00:09:19,200 --> 00:09:21,440 - And like I say, there is that certainly, 201 00:09:21,440 --> 00:09:25,000 that LSP is in a lot of editors. 202 00:09:25,000 --> 00:09:26,080 But if it does more than that, 203 00:09:26,080 --> 00:09:29,240 because I think that's where code stands out, right? 204 00:09:29,240 --> 00:09:30,080 - Yeah. 205 00:09:30,080 --> 00:09:32,120 - So yes, thank you to Adam and everyone else 206 00:09:32,120 --> 00:09:35,720 who worked on the VS Code plugin 207 00:09:35,720 --> 00:09:38,760 because I'm sure there are more people. 208 00:09:38,760 --> 00:09:44,920 It's something I use, 209 00:09:44,920 --> 00:09:48,840 'cause I use code to develop all the JavaScript and CSS 210 00:09:48,840 --> 00:09:51,280 for the package index. 211 00:09:51,280 --> 00:09:52,600 And so when I'm doing that, 212 00:09:52,600 --> 00:09:54,920 in fact, I was doing it this afternoon, 213 00:09:54,920 --> 00:09:58,520 I also ran the server through VS Code. 214 00:09:58,520 --> 00:10:03,040 And so that's the situation in which I use VS Code 215 00:10:03,040 --> 00:10:05,600 kind of in anger to do real work. 216 00:10:05,600 --> 00:10:08,160 When I'm working purely on Swift code, 217 00:10:08,160 --> 00:10:10,880 I do still do it in Xcode. 218 00:10:10,880 --> 00:10:15,800 I find that experience is still noticeably better 219 00:10:15,800 --> 00:10:20,120 than VS Code, but it's certainly not something 220 00:10:20,120 --> 00:10:24,720 you're hobbling along with, it's a real, it does work. 221 00:10:24,720 --> 00:10:26,360 - It does, and there are people, 222 00:10:26,360 --> 00:10:29,920 especially those who work just exclusively on Linux, 223 00:10:29,920 --> 00:10:32,560 who use it as an everyday tool 224 00:10:32,560 --> 00:10:36,800 and do say that it's working great. 225 00:10:36,800 --> 00:10:41,800 So I think it's a viable approach to use Swift on Linux. 226 00:10:41,800 --> 00:10:45,200 I don't think you're that, 227 00:10:45,200 --> 00:10:48,320 you can have a great experience, I believe. 228 00:10:48,320 --> 00:10:50,080 - Yeah, absolutely, yeah. 229 00:10:50,080 --> 00:10:52,760 And then the final part of the question is Android. 230 00:10:52,760 --> 00:10:57,120 And I am gonna basically say that I'm not very well up 231 00:10:57,120 --> 00:11:01,800 on making Android apps in Swift. 232 00:11:01,800 --> 00:11:04,960 I know there was a project, 233 00:11:04,960 --> 00:11:07,160 and in fact, I'm sure that project has continued. 234 00:11:07,160 --> 00:11:10,400 I know there was a project that got some way towards that, 235 00:11:10,400 --> 00:11:13,320 but I don't know the current status of that. 236 00:11:13,320 --> 00:11:14,160 - Yeah, me neither. 237 00:11:14,160 --> 00:11:16,320 It popped up, but it was quite a while ago 238 00:11:16,320 --> 00:11:21,080 that there was some activity around Android support. 239 00:11:21,080 --> 00:11:22,920 And I don't know where that went. 240 00:11:22,920 --> 00:11:23,960 I don't think it's, 241 00:11:23,960 --> 00:11:28,360 in the hierarchy of next platforms, 242 00:11:28,360 --> 00:11:30,840 I believe Windows is probably the closest 243 00:11:30,840 --> 00:11:33,600 to seeing proper support. 244 00:11:33,600 --> 00:11:37,360 And then Wasm is the other one that comes to mind. 245 00:11:37,360 --> 00:11:40,800 I think that's the order 246 00:11:40,800 --> 00:11:44,440 in which we'll see new platforms appear 247 00:11:44,440 --> 00:11:47,200 in our compatibility matrix for sure. 248 00:11:47,200 --> 00:11:48,320 - Sure, yeah. 249 00:11:48,320 --> 00:11:50,440 The only other thing to mention here is 250 00:11:50,440 --> 00:11:54,440 it's not running Swift on Android, 251 00:11:54,440 --> 00:11:59,440 but actually one option for creating cross-platform, 252 00:11:59,440 --> 00:12:04,320 at least backend logic, is Kotlin Multiplatform. 253 00:12:04,320 --> 00:12:08,920 So Kotlin is the language that you might develop 254 00:12:08,920 --> 00:12:09,880 any Android app in, 255 00:12:09,880 --> 00:12:13,000 which I believe is sitting on top of Java still, 256 00:12:13,000 --> 00:12:16,480 but it's a very different language than Java. 257 00:12:16,480 --> 00:12:19,640 Much more modern, much more like Swift actually. 258 00:12:19,640 --> 00:12:23,520 And Kotlin Multiplatform is a technology 259 00:12:23,520 --> 00:12:26,160 that allows you to share Kotlin code 260 00:12:26,160 --> 00:12:30,600 between Swift and your Android applications. 261 00:12:30,600 --> 00:12:35,600 And that I believe is really quite far along. 262 00:12:35,600 --> 00:12:37,720 You know, that's usable. 263 00:12:37,720 --> 00:12:40,480 - Right, is that sort of like in spirit, 264 00:12:40,480 --> 00:12:42,520 like the C++ support in Swift? 265 00:12:42,520 --> 00:12:45,720 Does it just mix objects and call 266 00:12:45,720 --> 00:12:48,760 from one language to the other, or how does that work? 267 00:12:48,760 --> 00:12:50,640 - Really great question, yeah. 268 00:12:50,640 --> 00:12:52,160 And we'll leave it there. 269 00:12:52,160 --> 00:12:54,400 (laughing) 270 00:12:54,400 --> 00:12:58,800 Really, really just a great question, yeah. 271 00:12:58,800 --> 00:13:03,120 - We might have more of that in the future perhaps. 272 00:13:03,120 --> 00:13:07,440 - I think what we're really acting as here 273 00:13:07,440 --> 00:13:12,000 is the inspiration to Google 274 00:13:12,000 --> 00:13:14,000 and go and search. 275 00:13:14,000 --> 00:13:15,840 - And maybe there's someone listening to this 276 00:13:15,840 --> 00:13:19,120 that's saying, "God damn it, I know this." 277 00:13:19,120 --> 00:13:22,400 - Completely uninformed podcast hosts, yes. 278 00:13:22,400 --> 00:13:25,440 Actually, no, not completely uninformed, 279 00:13:25,440 --> 00:13:27,240 only dangerously uninformed. 280 00:13:27,240 --> 00:13:32,920 - Speaking of questions, Dave, 281 00:13:32,920 --> 00:13:35,840 how do you add a package to the Swift package index? 282 00:13:35,840 --> 00:13:38,680 - How do you add a package to the Swift? 283 00:13:38,680 --> 00:13:40,840 You go to the add a package page. 284 00:13:40,840 --> 00:13:42,840 - That's totally out of the blue, isn't it? 285 00:13:42,840 --> 00:13:43,680 (laughing) 286 00:13:43,680 --> 00:13:44,520 How do you add a-- 287 00:13:44,520 --> 00:13:46,400 - I wasn't expecting that question, 288 00:13:46,400 --> 00:13:47,960 but yes, you go to the add a package page. 289 00:13:47,960 --> 00:13:51,040 - Exactly, no one expects the Spanish inquisition. 290 00:13:51,040 --> 00:13:52,640 (laughing) 291 00:13:52,640 --> 00:13:53,840 - Is it a trick question? 292 00:13:53,840 --> 00:13:55,760 - No, it is a very straightforward question, 293 00:13:55,760 --> 00:13:57,520 which you have actually answered recently, 294 00:13:57,520 --> 00:13:59,880 which is why I'm bringing it up. 295 00:13:59,880 --> 00:14:02,840 - Yeah, you go to the add a package page 296 00:14:02,840 --> 00:14:04,080 on the package index site, 297 00:14:04,080 --> 00:14:07,000 and that takes you to a GitHub issue 298 00:14:07,000 --> 00:14:10,120 that starts a workflow that adds the package to the list, 299 00:14:10,120 --> 00:14:12,880 and I'm completely blanking on why I might, 300 00:14:12,880 --> 00:14:14,840 why this might be relevant. 301 00:14:14,840 --> 00:14:17,880 - So you went on a competing podcast the other day, 302 00:14:17,880 --> 00:14:19,040 well, I listened to it. 303 00:14:19,040 --> 00:14:22,840 You were on the "More Than Just Code" podcast 304 00:14:22,840 --> 00:14:23,680 with Tim Mitra. 305 00:14:23,680 --> 00:14:25,240 - I was on the "More Than Just Code," 306 00:14:25,240 --> 00:14:26,240 yeah, absolutely, yeah. 307 00:14:26,240 --> 00:14:27,640 - You were, you were, 308 00:14:27,640 --> 00:14:29,640 and you've been asked this very question, 309 00:14:29,640 --> 00:14:32,800 and I was the one listening and almost shouting, 310 00:14:32,800 --> 00:14:36,640 "Dave, no, it's easier, it's easier, it's easier." 311 00:14:36,640 --> 00:14:38,080 - What did I say? 312 00:14:38,080 --> 00:14:40,280 - Well, you were kind of apologetic 313 00:14:40,280 --> 00:14:44,160 that it is, that it uses Git and is a bit complicated, 314 00:14:44,160 --> 00:14:46,560 and you said there's a button to click, 315 00:14:46,560 --> 00:14:48,720 and then you add the URL and stuff, 316 00:14:48,720 --> 00:14:49,640 and I thought this whole time, 317 00:14:49,640 --> 00:14:52,280 no, it's actually easier, it's actually easier than that, 318 00:14:52,280 --> 00:14:54,840 and I wanted to just bring that up, 319 00:14:54,840 --> 00:14:56,240 not to shame you or anything, 320 00:14:56,240 --> 00:14:59,640 because it is, that's how we-- 321 00:14:59,640 --> 00:15:01,200 - That's just a happy side effect, right? 322 00:15:01,200 --> 00:15:02,880 - (laughs) Exactly. 323 00:15:02,880 --> 00:15:05,520 (both laughing) 324 00:15:05,520 --> 00:15:07,880 No, because I wanted to bring it up 325 00:15:07,880 --> 00:15:10,160 because I don't think many people know it, 326 00:15:10,160 --> 00:15:13,080 and it's sort of hidden, right? 327 00:15:13,080 --> 00:15:15,360 There is no UI for that, really, 328 00:15:15,360 --> 00:15:17,360 but actually, I find the easiest way, 329 00:15:17,360 --> 00:15:20,840 and that's how I add packages to the indexes. 330 00:15:20,840 --> 00:15:23,080 If you are on a GitHub page, 331 00:15:23,080 --> 00:15:25,720 you just replace GitHub in the URL 332 00:15:25,720 --> 00:15:26,960 with Swift package index, 333 00:15:26,960 --> 00:15:30,520 and then you land on a page which has a button, 334 00:15:30,520 --> 00:15:31,960 and then you just click buttons from there. 335 00:15:31,960 --> 00:15:33,800 You have no typing to do whatsoever 336 00:15:33,800 --> 00:15:37,880 because it pre-fills the pull request that we then open 337 00:15:37,880 --> 00:15:40,360 with the URL already put in 338 00:15:40,360 --> 00:15:42,520 because you've just come from the site. 339 00:15:42,520 --> 00:15:45,040 So to explain what's happening there, 340 00:15:45,040 --> 00:15:47,840 if you replace the GitHub in the domain name 341 00:15:47,840 --> 00:15:49,160 with Swift package index, 342 00:15:49,160 --> 00:15:52,600 we go to a package page stub. 343 00:15:52,600 --> 00:15:54,280 We obviously don't have the package yet. 344 00:15:54,280 --> 00:15:56,440 Well, if we have it already, you're already done, right? 345 00:15:56,440 --> 00:15:58,280 You land on the page and you see, 346 00:15:58,280 --> 00:16:00,160 all right, there's nothing for me to do 347 00:16:00,160 --> 00:16:02,400 because the package is already there. 348 00:16:02,400 --> 00:16:04,760 If it isn't, instead of rendering a 404, 349 00:16:04,760 --> 00:16:08,000 what we do is we show a page which has a button 350 00:16:08,000 --> 00:16:10,320 where you can either go back to the GitHub page 351 00:16:10,320 --> 00:16:12,160 if you landed there in error, 352 00:16:12,160 --> 00:16:15,680 or you can click a button there that says add this package, 353 00:16:15,680 --> 00:16:18,120 and then it opens up a pull request 354 00:16:18,120 --> 00:16:19,200 with everything filled in, 355 00:16:19,200 --> 00:16:21,320 and that's why I wanted to bring it up 356 00:16:21,320 --> 00:16:23,760 because I find that's actually the easiest way to do it 357 00:16:23,760 --> 00:16:28,560 because you can both check if it's already there 358 00:16:28,560 --> 00:16:30,440 and then add it in one step. 359 00:16:30,440 --> 00:16:31,840 There's no fiddling around to do, 360 00:16:31,840 --> 00:16:35,360 and that's why I find it really easy. 361 00:16:35,360 --> 00:16:37,760 And if you want, you can even go further, 362 00:16:37,760 --> 00:16:38,600 and that's what I do. 363 00:16:38,600 --> 00:16:41,920 I have a little bookmarklet that does a replacement of the, 364 00:16:41,920 --> 00:16:45,240 and you wrote this, actually, this bookmarklet. 365 00:16:45,240 --> 00:16:47,520 So it does a replacing of the GitHub 366 00:16:47,520 --> 00:16:50,040 in the domain name via JavaScript. 367 00:16:50,040 --> 00:16:51,640 So all I do is click buttons. 368 00:16:51,640 --> 00:16:55,000 I don't ever do replacement typing. 369 00:16:55,000 --> 00:16:57,800 I'm not sure how we could better expose that 370 00:16:57,800 --> 00:17:01,960 or make that bookmarklet easier to install. 371 00:17:01,960 --> 00:17:04,800 I mean, I'm not sure if people add lots of packages 372 00:17:04,800 --> 00:17:08,400 that they might want to keep that bookmarklet around, 373 00:17:08,400 --> 00:17:10,600 but I do because I often add packages this way. 374 00:17:10,600 --> 00:17:14,400 But even so, I think it might be just easier 375 00:17:14,400 --> 00:17:16,640 to just try a TypeSwift package index 376 00:17:16,640 --> 00:17:20,440 over the GitHub in the domain to get it all started. 377 00:17:20,440 --> 00:17:21,280 I don't know. 378 00:17:21,280 --> 00:17:25,120 - So yeah, I'm not sure how we could make 379 00:17:25,120 --> 00:17:27,760 that process more visible. 380 00:17:27,760 --> 00:17:30,120 I deliberately don't mention that process. 381 00:17:30,120 --> 00:17:33,200 It is also the process I use to add packages to the index, 382 00:17:33,200 --> 00:17:36,040 and it is by far the easiest way, 383 00:17:36,040 --> 00:17:39,360 but that manual step of either knowing 384 00:17:39,360 --> 00:17:40,680 that you can do it with a bookmarklet 385 00:17:40,680 --> 00:17:44,400 or manually typing in Swift package index to replace GitHub 386 00:17:44,400 --> 00:17:51,400 is enough for me to not exactly keep it secret, 387 00:17:51,400 --> 00:17:55,880 but not talk about it because it feels like a cheat code 388 00:17:55,880 --> 00:17:58,000 for adding packages to the package index. 389 00:17:58,000 --> 00:18:00,600 (laughing) 390 00:18:00,600 --> 00:18:04,400 I think the point that I was talking, 391 00:18:04,400 --> 00:18:05,880 I don't remember exactly what I said 392 00:18:05,880 --> 00:18:08,400 just 'cause I don't remember many things. 393 00:18:08,400 --> 00:18:09,240 (laughing) 394 00:18:09,240 --> 00:18:10,920 There are many things I don't remember, 395 00:18:10,920 --> 00:18:13,600 but I don't remember exactly what I said with Tim. 396 00:18:13,600 --> 00:18:16,480 But I think the point that probably came up 397 00:18:16,480 --> 00:18:21,480 was that that process of the whole package list JSON file 398 00:18:21,480 --> 00:18:25,160 is like there are some problems with that file 399 00:18:25,160 --> 00:18:27,840 and it adds some friction to, 400 00:18:27,840 --> 00:18:30,160 no matter what this process around 401 00:18:30,160 --> 00:18:31,880 getting something into that file is, 402 00:18:31,880 --> 00:18:33,400 it adds some friction to that process, 403 00:18:33,400 --> 00:18:36,800 but that it's important because that's the only record 404 00:18:36,800 --> 00:18:39,600 of who added what package to the index. 405 00:18:39,600 --> 00:18:43,320 And it's good just to have a little bit of a trail 406 00:18:43,320 --> 00:18:46,000 of like where did each package 407 00:18:46,000 --> 00:18:49,640 eventually kind of originate from. 408 00:18:49,640 --> 00:18:54,640 But when we've been kind of making it easier over the years, 409 00:18:55,120 --> 00:18:58,960 but actually the mechanism that we've used to make it easier 410 00:18:58,960 --> 00:19:01,320 and I should credit James Sherlock here 411 00:19:01,320 --> 00:19:06,000 who did a lot of the work to initially get this working. 412 00:19:06,000 --> 00:19:10,680 What we've actually done is we have made that process easier 413 00:19:10,680 --> 00:19:13,320 but we've added various different ways 414 00:19:13,320 --> 00:19:14,560 to do the same process. 415 00:19:14,560 --> 00:19:16,480 And that in itself kind of makes things 416 00:19:16,480 --> 00:19:17,640 a little bit more complicated. 417 00:19:17,640 --> 00:19:21,080 Like we still get pull requests 418 00:19:21,080 --> 00:19:24,720 that are people cloning the repository, editing the file, 419 00:19:24,720 --> 00:19:26,760 because that was the very original way of doing it. 420 00:19:26,760 --> 00:19:30,440 And there's probably some blog posts and stuff out there 421 00:19:30,440 --> 00:19:33,000 that say, this is how you should add a package to the index. 422 00:19:33,000 --> 00:19:36,000 And so people follow that. 423 00:19:36,000 --> 00:19:40,560 And I do feel like we're kind of, 424 00:19:40,560 --> 00:19:43,680 it's a pain point of the package index 425 00:19:43,680 --> 00:19:47,960 that I don't know how we can easily fix it, 426 00:19:47,960 --> 00:19:51,040 but it has been on my mind a little bit recently. 427 00:19:51,040 --> 00:19:52,960 So there's probably a bit of latent guilt 428 00:19:52,960 --> 00:19:54,760 when Tim asked me a question. 429 00:19:54,760 --> 00:19:59,760 I wanted to confess my sins on the podcast. 430 00:19:59,760 --> 00:20:03,640 - I don't know. 431 00:20:03,640 --> 00:20:05,480 - The sins of adding a package. 432 00:20:05,480 --> 00:20:09,640 - I see the upsides probably more than the downsides here 433 00:20:09,640 --> 00:20:14,200 because even if the list was in a different format 434 00:20:14,200 --> 00:20:16,920 and maybe not hosted in a GitHub repository, 435 00:20:16,920 --> 00:20:20,840 we'd still probably want to have some sort of audit trail 436 00:20:20,840 --> 00:20:22,920 who added it and that. 437 00:20:22,920 --> 00:20:23,760 - Yes. 438 00:20:23,760 --> 00:20:25,560 - Sort of complexity doesn't go away. 439 00:20:25,560 --> 00:20:28,920 In fact, I think using GitHub here is making it easier 440 00:20:28,920 --> 00:20:31,560 because otherwise, would you want to ask people 441 00:20:31,560 --> 00:20:33,440 to create an account to add a package? 442 00:20:33,440 --> 00:20:36,560 I feel like that's worse. 443 00:20:36,560 --> 00:20:41,560 So I can't think of lots of ways to make that 444 00:20:41,560 --> 00:20:45,400 actually smoother than it already is. 445 00:20:45,400 --> 00:20:48,120 - Yeah, so this is entirely why it is still this way. 446 00:20:50,400 --> 00:20:53,440 And I think your point is well-made 447 00:20:53,440 --> 00:20:55,120 that you don't want to get people to add, 448 00:20:55,120 --> 00:20:58,000 create an account simply to add a package. 449 00:20:58,000 --> 00:21:00,560 I think there is gonna come a time 450 00:21:00,560 --> 00:21:04,240 where there are several reasons 451 00:21:04,240 --> 00:21:07,320 you might want an account with package index. 452 00:21:07,320 --> 00:21:10,400 And as that happens, if that happens, 453 00:21:10,400 --> 00:21:13,720 and it's definitely not a foregone conclusion 454 00:21:13,720 --> 00:21:17,720 that it will happen, but that might be the change, 455 00:21:17,720 --> 00:21:20,440 the point that we need to change how we do it. 456 00:21:20,440 --> 00:21:23,840 But you're right that the kind of audit trail 457 00:21:23,840 --> 00:21:26,600 for want of a better word is the reason, that's it. 458 00:21:26,600 --> 00:21:28,440 That's the only reason that it's like this. 459 00:21:28,440 --> 00:21:31,800 - Yeah, and another upside is that the list is available. 460 00:21:31,800 --> 00:21:35,920 If anyone wants to use that list for anything, 461 00:21:35,920 --> 00:21:40,160 like analysis or just have a list of all packages 462 00:21:40,160 --> 00:21:42,680 that are in the index, that's the place to go. 463 00:21:42,680 --> 00:21:45,320 And we don't have to deal with any requests around it. 464 00:21:45,320 --> 00:21:47,520 It's all right there. 465 00:21:47,520 --> 00:21:50,480 So that's certainly a strong reason 466 00:21:50,480 --> 00:21:52,720 to keep it open like this, 467 00:21:52,720 --> 00:21:55,120 which any other system would then have to replicate 468 00:21:55,120 --> 00:21:57,800 or offer in some way. 469 00:21:57,800 --> 00:21:58,640 - That's great. 470 00:21:58,640 --> 00:22:03,200 Okay, shall we do some package recommendations? 471 00:22:03,200 --> 00:22:04,560 - Let's do it. 472 00:22:04,560 --> 00:22:06,680 - Yeah, I can kick us off. 473 00:22:06,680 --> 00:22:11,160 And my first package this week is from Jasmine Eilers 474 00:22:11,160 --> 00:22:14,480 and it's called NSAttributedStringBuilder. 475 00:22:15,640 --> 00:22:18,920 And this is a package that's been around 476 00:22:18,920 --> 00:22:21,920 for only a few weeks. 477 00:22:21,920 --> 00:22:23,080 It's about a month old. 478 00:22:23,080 --> 00:22:27,840 And it is a result builder type package. 479 00:22:27,840 --> 00:22:32,840 So it allows you to create NSAttributedStrings 480 00:22:32,840 --> 00:22:38,480 by defining kind of methods on string objects. 481 00:22:38,480 --> 00:22:44,080 So you could say, for example, hello.font 482 00:22:45,040 --> 00:22:48,800 and then give it a font.italic.foregroundcolor.underline. 483 00:22:48,800 --> 00:22:49,840 It supports images. 484 00:22:49,840 --> 00:22:53,080 So you can say, give it a, 485 00:22:53,080 --> 00:22:56,000 there was an image example here. 486 00:22:56,000 --> 00:22:57,600 I was looking at it earlier. 487 00:22:57,600 --> 00:22:58,440 Oh yeah, here we go. 488 00:22:58,440 --> 00:23:02,800 There's a .image method that you can call on a string, 489 00:23:02,800 --> 00:23:05,960 which says, you know, here's a UI image or whatever it is. 490 00:23:05,960 --> 00:23:08,360 And add that into the attribute to string. 491 00:23:08,360 --> 00:23:10,040 You can put new lines in there. 492 00:23:10,040 --> 00:23:12,360 You can add other attributed strings 493 00:23:12,360 --> 00:23:14,840 if you've already got attributed strings. 494 00:23:14,840 --> 00:23:17,080 And of course, out of the result of this 495 00:23:17,080 --> 00:23:19,880 comes a newly formed attributed string 496 00:23:19,880 --> 00:23:22,760 that you can use all over the place. 497 00:23:22,760 --> 00:23:24,360 And I mean, there are lots of ways 498 00:23:24,360 --> 00:23:26,560 to generate attributed strings these days. 499 00:23:26,560 --> 00:23:30,600 Foundation has markdown parsing these days 500 00:23:30,600 --> 00:23:34,400 and certainly has some level still of HTML parsing. 501 00:23:34,400 --> 00:23:38,080 But if you just want to generate some attributed strings 502 00:23:38,080 --> 00:23:42,440 to pop in your project, that default syntax for it, 503 00:23:43,640 --> 00:23:47,440 I've written many lines of attributed string code 504 00:23:47,440 --> 00:23:48,280 in my time. 505 00:23:48,280 --> 00:23:52,920 And this certainly seems like a significantly easier way 506 00:23:52,920 --> 00:23:56,360 to put together a kind of native attributed string. 507 00:23:56,360 --> 00:23:57,640 - Nice, that sounds really nice. 508 00:23:57,640 --> 00:24:00,800 I haven't actually used an attributed string that much, 509 00:24:00,800 --> 00:24:02,800 but I have seen examples. 510 00:24:02,800 --> 00:24:06,000 So you have to do lots of sort of range stuff, right? 511 00:24:06,000 --> 00:24:09,880 Where you, when you have bold and italic 512 00:24:09,880 --> 00:24:11,000 and that sort of stuff, don't you? 513 00:24:11,000 --> 00:24:12,720 You have to fiddle a bit like. 514 00:24:12,720 --> 00:24:15,680 - Yes, lots of ranges. 515 00:24:15,680 --> 00:24:18,760 I have also just noticed at the bottom of the readme file, 516 00:24:18,760 --> 00:24:21,200 which I didn't see when I was looking at it originally, 517 00:24:21,200 --> 00:24:25,360 it says this project is inspired by Ethan Huang's project, 518 00:24:25,360 --> 00:24:27,600 NSAttributedStringBuilder, which has the same 519 00:24:27,600 --> 00:24:32,600 and svdo/swift-richstring. 520 00:24:32,600 --> 00:24:36,320 So there are a couple of projects here. 521 00:24:36,320 --> 00:24:37,400 And actually we were chatting 522 00:24:37,400 --> 00:24:38,920 just before we recorded the podcast. 523 00:24:38,920 --> 00:24:40,920 And one of the things that I said was, 524 00:24:40,920 --> 00:24:43,400 I have a feeling that we've talked about this before 525 00:24:43,400 --> 00:24:45,880 and we haven't, but it's possible we talked 526 00:24:45,880 --> 00:24:47,000 about one of these other ones before. 527 00:24:47,000 --> 00:24:49,760 - We might have, because I've seen a couple 528 00:24:49,760 --> 00:24:50,760 of packages like this. 529 00:24:50,760 --> 00:24:53,040 And I think it's a great example 530 00:24:53,040 --> 00:24:57,320 where a builder can help construct these things 531 00:24:57,320 --> 00:25:00,240 because they are sort of fiddly to get right. 532 00:25:00,240 --> 00:25:03,040 And I think that's where these kinds of builders 533 00:25:03,040 --> 00:25:06,200 help lay out things in a better way 534 00:25:06,200 --> 00:25:09,760 than by sort of low level fiddling 535 00:25:09,760 --> 00:25:11,040 with properties and stuff. 536 00:25:11,040 --> 00:25:14,880 - And we do have both of those packages in the index. 537 00:25:14,880 --> 00:25:19,480 So that is RichString by Stefan van den Oord 538 00:25:19,480 --> 00:25:22,960 and a package with exactly the same name, 539 00:25:22,960 --> 00:25:26,400 NSAttributedStringBuilder by Ethan Huang. 540 00:25:26,400 --> 00:25:32,640 - My first pick is a pick you have probably seen. 541 00:25:32,640 --> 00:25:34,120 You might even have it in the list, 542 00:25:34,120 --> 00:25:35,920 but I'm going first dibs. 543 00:25:35,920 --> 00:25:40,920 And the package is called PowPOW by Robb Böhnke. 544 00:25:40,920 --> 00:25:44,840 You probably know this package, right? 545 00:25:44,840 --> 00:25:46,120 - I am aware of this package 546 00:25:46,120 --> 00:25:48,000 and I did see the news about this package, yeah. 547 00:25:48,000 --> 00:25:49,000 - So the news this week, 548 00:25:49,000 --> 00:25:52,120 this is actually a now open source version 549 00:25:52,120 --> 00:25:56,480 of the package that was previously a licensed package 550 00:25:56,480 --> 00:25:57,840 that you would buy. 551 00:25:57,840 --> 00:26:00,040 And what it does, the tagline is 552 00:26:00,040 --> 00:26:02,560 delightful SwiftUI effects for your app. 553 00:26:03,680 --> 00:26:08,400 And if you've followed Rob on Mastodon 554 00:26:08,400 --> 00:26:11,880 or perhaps elsewhere, that's where I've seen it. 555 00:26:11,880 --> 00:26:14,960 He's been posting amazing examples 556 00:26:14,960 --> 00:26:16,560 of what this library can do, 557 00:26:16,560 --> 00:26:19,800 like animations, transitions, that sort of stuff. 558 00:26:19,800 --> 00:26:24,000 Really delightful ways of enhancing your UI 559 00:26:24,000 --> 00:26:25,880 and a particular SwiftUI here 560 00:26:25,880 --> 00:26:28,120 with all sorts of modifiers 561 00:26:28,120 --> 00:26:30,880 and things that make it really interesting and fun. 562 00:26:32,600 --> 00:26:34,680 So that's what this package is about, 563 00:26:34,680 --> 00:26:36,720 enhancing your SwiftUI. 564 00:26:36,720 --> 00:26:39,200 There's a great site with examples 565 00:26:39,200 --> 00:26:41,200 of all the effects that are available. 566 00:26:41,200 --> 00:26:43,320 I did try to run it in a playground. 567 00:26:43,320 --> 00:26:45,640 Unfortunately, it doesn't work 568 00:26:45,640 --> 00:26:49,880 with our trying to playground mechanism. 569 00:26:49,880 --> 00:26:51,800 I believe that's, I mean, it runs, 570 00:26:51,800 --> 00:26:53,160 but it doesn't show anything. 571 00:26:53,160 --> 00:26:56,240 I think that's because it uses, 572 00:26:56,240 --> 00:27:00,080 it needs to run on device or at least on a proper simulator, 573 00:27:00,080 --> 00:27:03,400 not just in the playground. 574 00:27:03,400 --> 00:27:05,240 It seems like this is running on a layer 575 00:27:05,240 --> 00:27:07,840 that's not present in Swift playgrounds. 576 00:27:07,840 --> 00:27:09,680 That's my speculation. 577 00:27:09,680 --> 00:27:12,920 But the example page should help give you a preview 578 00:27:12,920 --> 00:27:15,000 of all the things that are available. 579 00:27:15,000 --> 00:27:15,920 And it's extensive. 580 00:27:15,920 --> 00:27:17,160 There's lots of stuff you can do. 581 00:27:17,160 --> 00:27:19,480 And it's just a great package 582 00:27:19,480 --> 00:27:21,240 and people seem to be really excited 583 00:27:21,240 --> 00:27:22,760 that it's now available. 584 00:27:22,760 --> 00:27:23,600 - And by the sound of it, 585 00:27:23,600 --> 00:27:25,520 your cats are also big fans of this package. 586 00:27:25,520 --> 00:27:26,640 - Yeah, absolutely is. 587 00:27:27,760 --> 00:27:30,000 And I say that to save me the pain 588 00:27:30,000 --> 00:27:31,400 of trying to edit those out. 589 00:27:31,400 --> 00:27:36,040 - This is going to be the case for a bit 590 00:27:36,040 --> 00:27:39,120 because apparently I've been, 591 00:27:39,120 --> 00:27:41,120 the server has been lacking around here. 592 00:27:41,120 --> 00:27:45,000 - Yes, I think so. 593 00:27:45,000 --> 00:27:48,480 So I did see that this went to be 594 00:27:48,480 --> 00:27:52,840 a kind of freely available open source project this week. 595 00:27:52,840 --> 00:27:56,280 And I mean, the work that Rob does 596 00:27:56,280 --> 00:28:01,280 in many different aspects of Apple platform development 597 00:28:01,280 --> 00:28:02,680 is remarkable, 598 00:28:02,680 --> 00:28:05,640 but this is another great example of the work that he does. 599 00:28:05,640 --> 00:28:08,600 And I think it's also worth mentioning 600 00:28:08,600 --> 00:28:11,160 that the reason that it went, 601 00:28:11,160 --> 00:28:15,080 that the transition to free and open source this week 602 00:28:15,080 --> 00:28:19,320 was that it's effectively being sponsored by Emerge Tools 603 00:28:19,320 --> 00:28:23,560 who were previous sponsors of the Swift Package Index. 604 00:28:23,560 --> 00:28:28,280 And I took a quick look into the kind of, 605 00:28:28,280 --> 00:28:31,120 not the details of it, of course, 606 00:28:31,120 --> 00:28:33,320 but it looks like Emerge Tools 607 00:28:33,320 --> 00:28:36,360 are actually sponsoring quite a number of Swift packages 608 00:28:36,360 --> 00:28:39,640 in the kind of package ecosystem. 609 00:28:39,640 --> 00:28:42,040 So that is definitely to be encouraged. 610 00:28:42,040 --> 00:28:45,200 And we had a great experience working with them 611 00:28:45,200 --> 00:28:46,640 on the Swift Package Index too. 612 00:28:46,640 --> 00:28:49,280 So it's great to see this happen. 613 00:28:49,280 --> 00:28:54,280 And I'm happy that more people will get to use this package. 614 00:28:54,280 --> 00:28:55,440 - That's fantastic. 615 00:28:55,440 --> 00:28:57,240 I was about to ask if you know any, 616 00:28:57,240 --> 00:28:59,280 because I didn't know of the details why 617 00:28:59,280 --> 00:29:00,280 or how that came about. 618 00:29:00,280 --> 00:29:01,880 I only saw that it ended, 619 00:29:01,880 --> 00:29:05,120 it's hosted in the Emerge Tools GitHub account now, 620 00:29:05,120 --> 00:29:05,960 but that's great. 621 00:29:05,960 --> 00:29:07,040 That's great news. 622 00:29:07,040 --> 00:29:09,200 - Yeah, so I think, you know, 623 00:29:09,200 --> 00:29:11,640 open source needs more funding 624 00:29:11,640 --> 00:29:14,960 and this is a way for that to happen. 625 00:29:14,960 --> 00:29:17,440 And there's obviously a kind of logo 626 00:29:17,440 --> 00:29:20,760 in the header of the readme file there 627 00:29:20,760 --> 00:29:21,800 and various links and stuff. 628 00:29:21,800 --> 00:29:26,800 And if that's what it takes to make open source development, 629 00:29:26,800 --> 00:29:31,240 you know, a more practical and comfortable thing to do, 630 00:29:31,240 --> 00:29:32,400 then that's great. 631 00:29:32,400 --> 00:29:33,560 - Yeah. 632 00:29:33,560 --> 00:29:38,560 - My next package is by Mikhail Vospennikov 633 00:29:38,560 --> 00:29:42,880 and it's called Gestures. 634 00:29:42,880 --> 00:29:45,320 And it's been around for about a year now. 635 00:29:45,320 --> 00:29:50,320 And this is a enhanced gesture API for SwiftUI. 636 00:29:50,320 --> 00:29:54,440 So obviously SwiftUI supports all of the standard 637 00:29:54,440 --> 00:29:57,040 kind of gesture recognizer type gestures 638 00:29:57,040 --> 00:29:59,320 that you would have used in UIKit or, 639 00:29:59,320 --> 00:30:02,040 well, UIKit basically. 640 00:30:02,040 --> 00:30:07,720 But there's still quite a lot of work you need to do 641 00:30:07,720 --> 00:30:09,920 with kind of interpreting the gestures 642 00:30:09,920 --> 00:30:12,520 and seeing, you know, what trigger point, 643 00:30:12,520 --> 00:30:14,760 like if you have a swipe gesture, 644 00:30:14,760 --> 00:30:16,680 you'll obviously get the coordinates 645 00:30:16,680 --> 00:30:17,560 of where you're swiping to 646 00:30:17,560 --> 00:30:19,080 and the distance and stuff like that. 647 00:30:19,080 --> 00:30:21,720 But it's your decision on what to do. 648 00:30:21,720 --> 00:30:23,560 And actually in reality, 649 00:30:23,560 --> 00:30:26,400 there are a bunch of really common things 650 00:30:26,400 --> 00:30:27,240 that you might want to do. 651 00:30:27,240 --> 00:30:32,160 So for example, you might want to add a swipe gesture 652 00:30:32,160 --> 00:30:34,080 that only actually triggers something 653 00:30:34,080 --> 00:30:37,760 when you've moved more than at least 15 points 654 00:30:37,760 --> 00:30:41,800 within the kind of context of that swipe. 655 00:30:41,800 --> 00:30:43,240 And this is what that package does. 656 00:30:43,240 --> 00:30:48,240 So it adds a whole set of extensions 657 00:30:48,240 --> 00:30:54,960 to SwiftUI gesture API that help you locate gestures 658 00:30:54,960 --> 00:31:00,000 and do things like trigger on minimum distance 659 00:31:00,000 --> 00:31:01,200 and that kind of stuff. 660 00:31:01,200 --> 00:31:04,720 So yeah, it gives you coordinate information, 661 00:31:04,720 --> 00:31:07,080 it gives you location information 662 00:31:07,080 --> 00:31:10,160 and very easy to integrate in your project. 663 00:31:10,160 --> 00:31:11,520 And as it says in the readme file, 664 00:31:11,520 --> 00:31:13,360 it's a lightweight package. 665 00:31:13,360 --> 00:31:16,120 So I don't think this is a huge amount of code 666 00:31:16,120 --> 00:31:17,240 that you're adding to your project. 667 00:31:17,240 --> 00:31:18,080 - Nice. 668 00:31:18,080 --> 00:31:23,720 Right, my second pick is called Scintilla Lib 669 00:31:23,720 --> 00:31:25,200 and it's by Danielle. 670 00:31:25,200 --> 00:31:29,000 That's all I have as far as author information goes. 671 00:31:29,000 --> 00:31:32,120 And this is, I'm taking a page 672 00:31:32,120 --> 00:31:35,280 from Dave's book of package picks here, 673 00:31:35,280 --> 00:31:37,280 'cause that's a dependency package 674 00:31:37,280 --> 00:31:40,320 you probably won't need or won't use as a dependency. 675 00:31:40,320 --> 00:31:41,400 (laughs) 676 00:31:41,400 --> 00:31:44,320 But it's a fun project to poke around in 677 00:31:44,320 --> 00:31:46,120 and run the examples of. 678 00:31:46,120 --> 00:31:51,600 What it is, it's a ray tracer ported from Clojure to Swift. 679 00:31:51,600 --> 00:31:56,600 And what it does, it's intended to be used 680 00:31:56,600 --> 00:32:00,000 more like a library rather than like an app or anything, 681 00:32:00,000 --> 00:32:01,480 but you can run it as an app 682 00:32:01,480 --> 00:32:05,120 and it has a little render view and UI 683 00:32:05,120 --> 00:32:07,160 where you can actually just render the thing 684 00:32:07,160 --> 00:32:08,840 and get some output. 685 00:32:08,840 --> 00:32:12,360 And it ships sort of like a Swift UI type DSL 686 00:32:12,360 --> 00:32:14,280 where you can describe the scene, 687 00:32:14,280 --> 00:32:16,280 like your objects, your camera, 688 00:32:16,280 --> 00:32:21,280 and then you can run it and you get a screen 689 00:32:21,280 --> 00:32:23,240 that shows the rendered output. 690 00:32:23,240 --> 00:32:25,640 And I found that really nice. 691 00:32:25,640 --> 00:32:28,280 It gives you something to play with 692 00:32:28,280 --> 00:32:33,280 and give you a little playground to try ray tracing 693 00:32:33,280 --> 00:32:38,080 if you're new to this or if you want to play around with that. 694 00:32:38,960 --> 00:32:41,200 A really fun little project that I ran. 695 00:32:41,200 --> 00:32:43,000 Also something that doesn't run in a playground, 696 00:32:43,000 --> 00:32:46,000 but it is very easy to just stick the examples 697 00:32:46,000 --> 00:32:48,200 in a command line app. 698 00:32:48,200 --> 00:32:51,080 So there's a description in the readme how to set this up. 699 00:32:51,080 --> 00:32:54,640 Effectively just create a blank Xcode project, 700 00:32:54,640 --> 00:32:59,640 command line project, and then paste in the main thing, 701 00:32:59,640 --> 00:33:05,760 the admin decorated result builder thing. 702 00:33:06,040 --> 00:33:09,600 And it is a bit like an app that you create in Swift UI 703 00:33:09,600 --> 00:33:12,440 that you then create in this DSL and you run it 704 00:33:12,440 --> 00:33:15,680 and you get this window and it shows the rendered output. 705 00:33:15,680 --> 00:33:20,680 Really nice little thing to play around with ray tracing. 706 00:33:20,680 --> 00:33:22,920 - I have so many questions. 707 00:33:22,920 --> 00:33:27,920 Does it do its own ray tracing or is it using metal or? 708 00:33:27,920 --> 00:33:29,640 - That's a great question. 709 00:33:29,640 --> 00:33:31,880 (laughing) 710 00:33:35,200 --> 00:33:36,040 - Revenge. 711 00:33:36,040 --> 00:33:40,000 - It opens a window, there's a, 712 00:33:40,000 --> 00:33:43,480 now it draws it line by line. 713 00:33:43,480 --> 00:33:45,040 So there's something happening. 714 00:33:45,040 --> 00:33:48,120 There's not a whole lot of cause firing when that happens. 715 00:33:48,120 --> 00:33:51,240 I don't know under the hood if it's accelerated. 716 00:33:51,240 --> 00:33:53,600 I suspect it isn't. 717 00:33:53,600 --> 00:33:57,040 I think it would be faster if it was. 718 00:33:57,040 --> 00:33:59,440 This seems to be a port from Clojure. 719 00:33:59,440 --> 00:34:03,240 So I don't, I'm too honest. 720 00:34:03,240 --> 00:34:06,080 I don't know how that would work if on either end, 721 00:34:06,080 --> 00:34:08,800 if it was accelerated, but I would imagine if it's, 722 00:34:08,800 --> 00:34:11,240 if it's ported from another language, 723 00:34:11,240 --> 00:34:16,240 it sounds more like it's a pure software ray tracer 724 00:34:16,240 --> 00:34:17,880 that is then ported one to one. 725 00:34:17,880 --> 00:34:21,200 But that's just me speculating without knowing 726 00:34:21,200 --> 00:34:25,240 a whole lot about ray tracing and the mechanics of all that 727 00:34:25,240 --> 00:34:27,920 and metal for that matter. 728 00:34:27,920 --> 00:34:31,640 - Sure, well, certainly I didn't actually spot 729 00:34:31,640 --> 00:34:32,480 that one going through. 730 00:34:32,480 --> 00:34:37,480 So I am gonna go and have a look at that after the show. 731 00:34:37,480 --> 00:34:41,960 My final package this week is kind of along the same lines. 732 00:34:41,960 --> 00:34:46,960 It is called Model 3D View by Freek, F-R-E-E-K. 733 00:34:46,960 --> 00:34:52,920 And what I really liked about, 734 00:34:52,920 --> 00:34:55,520 so the package description is render 3D models 735 00:34:55,520 --> 00:34:57,160 with SwiftUI effortlessly. 736 00:34:57,160 --> 00:35:01,200 And what I kind of liked about this is that 737 00:35:01,200 --> 00:35:05,080 it describes itself as image view for 3D models, 738 00:35:05,080 --> 00:35:08,040 which is an interesting way to think about it 739 00:35:08,040 --> 00:35:12,440 because we use image views all the time just to, 740 00:35:12,440 --> 00:35:14,280 you know, pop an image on the screen. 741 00:35:14,280 --> 00:35:16,600 And we don't really need to think about any of the stuff 742 00:35:16,600 --> 00:35:20,280 that needs to happen to get that image on the screen. 743 00:35:20,280 --> 00:35:26,120 And this Model 3D View package basically does the same 744 00:35:26,120 --> 00:35:27,680 for 3D models. 745 00:35:27,680 --> 00:35:32,680 Now, I know that SwiftUI has native support for USDZ models 746 00:35:32,680 --> 00:35:36,160 through the QuickLook framework, I think. 747 00:35:36,160 --> 00:35:41,880 But this also supports something called GLTF models, 748 00:35:41,880 --> 00:35:45,920 which is Graphics Library Transmission Format, 749 00:35:45,920 --> 00:35:49,840 which I believe is something that came out of WebGL. 750 00:35:49,840 --> 00:35:51,880 And again, I would ask you please, 751 00:35:51,880 --> 00:35:53,760 no detailed questions about this 752 00:35:53,760 --> 00:35:57,320 because my knowledge of this is a Wikipedia article. 753 00:35:57,320 --> 00:35:58,680 (laughs) 754 00:35:58,680 --> 00:36:01,680 We are making the least researched podcast 755 00:36:01,680 --> 00:36:03,960 in the history of podcasting here. 756 00:36:03,960 --> 00:36:09,760 But yes, it supports GLTF files 757 00:36:09,760 --> 00:36:11,800 and you can pop a skybox in there. 758 00:36:11,800 --> 00:36:14,200 So you can have a kind of a 3D background 759 00:36:14,200 --> 00:36:17,560 or a 2D background inside a skybox. 760 00:36:17,560 --> 00:36:18,520 You can change lighting, 761 00:36:18,520 --> 00:36:21,640 you've got some interactive camera controls. 762 00:36:21,640 --> 00:36:25,440 And the best bit about it, as far as I'm concerned, 763 00:36:25,440 --> 00:36:30,440 is you can pop a Model 3D View into your SwiftUI View 764 00:36:30,440 --> 00:36:34,040 and the only parameter you need 765 00:36:34,040 --> 00:36:38,320 is to pass the model file name in. 766 00:36:38,320 --> 00:36:39,680 And there you go. 767 00:36:39,680 --> 00:36:42,520 You can then, if you want to, you can transform it, 768 00:36:42,520 --> 00:36:46,040 you can rotate it, you can scale it, you can transform it. 769 00:36:46,040 --> 00:36:47,880 You can give it a new camera. 770 00:36:47,880 --> 00:36:49,360 You know, there's lots of different things 771 00:36:49,360 --> 00:36:50,640 including interactive cameras. 772 00:36:50,640 --> 00:36:52,480 And as I say, like things like skyboxes 773 00:36:52,480 --> 00:36:53,480 and stuff like that. 774 00:36:54,720 --> 00:36:58,600 But I liked the description of this as like, 775 00:36:58,600 --> 00:37:02,120 well, this is image view for 3D objects. 776 00:37:02,120 --> 00:37:06,000 And that I think is a really nice utility 777 00:37:06,000 --> 00:37:08,680 to have inside apps these days. 778 00:37:08,680 --> 00:37:11,960 In the frequently asked questions, 779 00:37:11,960 --> 00:37:14,160 there's a question here. 780 00:37:14,160 --> 00:37:16,080 Can I use this to make a 3D game? 781 00:37:16,080 --> 00:37:18,920 And the answer is in bold, no. 782 00:37:18,920 --> 00:37:21,160 (laughing) 783 00:37:23,200 --> 00:37:27,520 So yeah, so it's not, this is not a 3D framework. 784 00:37:27,520 --> 00:37:30,120 This is just, as I say, image view for 3D. 785 00:37:30,120 --> 00:37:31,200 - Nice. 786 00:37:31,200 --> 00:37:32,920 Did you mention the, 787 00:37:32,920 --> 00:37:35,520 I think you mentioned a couple of formats like 3D, 788 00:37:35,520 --> 00:37:37,720 but Model 3D wasn't a format. 789 00:37:37,720 --> 00:37:42,720 It's a placeholder for any sort of supported 3D format, 790 00:37:42,720 --> 00:37:43,560 right? 791 00:37:43,560 --> 00:37:44,560 - Yes. 792 00:37:44,560 --> 00:37:46,800 I'm not sure of the full list of formats it supports, 793 00:37:46,800 --> 00:37:49,040 but I know it supports this GLTF 794 00:37:49,040 --> 00:37:50,960 because it calls it out specifically. 795 00:37:51,840 --> 00:37:55,280 So, but yeah, Model 3D view is the name of the view 796 00:37:55,280 --> 00:37:58,120 that you would insert into your SwiftUI view hierarchy. 797 00:37:58,120 --> 00:37:59,520 - Nice. 798 00:37:59,520 --> 00:38:00,840 Yeah, it's interesting with these, 799 00:38:00,840 --> 00:38:03,480 that has largely gone away, right, 800 00:38:03,480 --> 00:38:08,480 with the graphics format, display format. 801 00:38:08,480 --> 00:38:10,040 I remember back in the day, 802 00:38:10,040 --> 00:38:13,600 one of the most used programs on my Mac 803 00:38:13,600 --> 00:38:15,760 was graphics converter. 804 00:38:15,760 --> 00:38:18,040 To convert between all the different formats 805 00:38:18,040 --> 00:38:19,520 that you would find on the internet. 806 00:38:19,520 --> 00:38:22,960 And you couldn't actually display unless you use that tool 807 00:38:22,960 --> 00:38:25,600 or converted it with that tool to a format 808 00:38:25,600 --> 00:38:27,400 that the Mac could display out of the box. 809 00:38:27,400 --> 00:38:30,160 So we've come a long way 810 00:38:30,160 --> 00:38:33,160 where anything is really supported, isn't it, 811 00:38:33,160 --> 00:38:34,920 with 2D graphics at least? 812 00:38:34,920 --> 00:38:36,600 - Without even, 813 00:38:36,600 --> 00:38:38,240 you don't even have to think about it anymore. 814 00:38:38,240 --> 00:38:39,080 You just kind of say, 815 00:38:39,080 --> 00:38:43,520 images are as easy to work with as text. 816 00:38:43,520 --> 00:38:46,120 Whereas I remember in my very early days 817 00:38:46,120 --> 00:38:51,120 writing Object Pascal to decode Windows bitmap files 818 00:38:51,120 --> 00:38:53,200 and having to read byte by byte. 819 00:38:53,200 --> 00:38:57,680 And yeah, it was a very long time ago. 820 00:38:57,680 --> 00:38:59,920 - It's interesting with live text, 821 00:38:59,920 --> 00:39:01,920 it goes even further that they're not, 822 00:39:01,920 --> 00:39:04,760 they're sort of sometimes even equivalent to text, right? 823 00:39:04,760 --> 00:39:08,920 I've had cases where I had something 824 00:39:08,920 --> 00:39:11,720 and I took a picture and then copied the text out 825 00:39:11,720 --> 00:39:15,080 in like a router password that I didn't want to type. 826 00:39:15,080 --> 00:39:20,080 Where it's become almost synonymous in some regards. 827 00:39:20,080 --> 00:39:22,360 There's a little bit of friction still 828 00:39:22,360 --> 00:39:25,800 in taking a picture and using it as text, 829 00:39:25,800 --> 00:39:29,200 but it's surprisingly little friction these days. 830 00:39:29,200 --> 00:39:30,320 It's amazing. 831 00:39:30,320 --> 00:39:32,160 - Yeah, I use that all the time too. 832 00:39:32,160 --> 00:39:36,000 - Right, my third pick is called 833 00:39:36,000 --> 00:39:39,240 SwiftUI Core Image by Dan Wood. 834 00:39:39,240 --> 00:39:43,880 And this is a really interesting package. 835 00:39:43,880 --> 00:39:48,440 So what it does as the name pretty much says already, 836 00:39:48,440 --> 00:39:51,560 it integrates Core Image into SwiftUI 837 00:39:51,560 --> 00:39:56,000 and gives you a sort of modifier based way 838 00:39:56,000 --> 00:40:00,640 of applying or creating image pipelines and preview them. 839 00:40:00,640 --> 00:40:01,920 Like for instance, in a playground. 840 00:40:01,920 --> 00:40:04,320 So this is something that you can actually use 841 00:40:04,320 --> 00:40:06,640 with our Try in a Playground feature. 842 00:40:06,640 --> 00:40:09,440 And it's really nice to take an image 843 00:40:09,440 --> 00:40:11,600 and then create these pipelines, 844 00:40:11,600 --> 00:40:14,560 like apply a sepia filter, a Gaussian blur, 845 00:40:14,560 --> 00:40:15,400 or something like that. 846 00:40:15,400 --> 00:40:19,320 So all the things that you know from Core Image. 847 00:40:19,320 --> 00:40:22,720 And I've not used that a lot, 848 00:40:22,720 --> 00:40:26,000 but Core Image is a different beast, right? 849 00:40:26,000 --> 00:40:28,800 It's a completely different API. 850 00:40:28,800 --> 00:40:31,520 So having that available and being able to use that 851 00:40:31,520 --> 00:40:35,560 on regular SwiftUI images is really nice. 852 00:40:35,560 --> 00:40:38,120 And it has dozens and dozens of modifiers. 853 00:40:38,120 --> 00:40:42,360 So it looks like it's a really extensive coverage 854 00:40:42,360 --> 00:40:44,000 of the Core Image API. 855 00:40:44,000 --> 00:40:46,200 It has some nice examples as well, 856 00:40:46,200 --> 00:40:48,400 and is an all around great package 857 00:40:48,400 --> 00:40:49,800 if you have that sort of a need 858 00:40:49,800 --> 00:40:52,200 to create a Core Image pipeline 859 00:40:52,200 --> 00:40:56,800 and play around with transforming images. 860 00:40:56,800 --> 00:40:58,280 - And there's a whole load of stuff 861 00:40:58,280 --> 00:41:01,440 that Core Image can do that you would probably 862 00:41:01,440 --> 00:41:02,600 be surprised at. 863 00:41:02,600 --> 00:41:05,920 It's an API which has been around for a long time, 864 00:41:05,920 --> 00:41:07,520 but it's a very powerful API. 865 00:41:07,520 --> 00:41:08,720 - Yeah. 866 00:41:08,720 --> 00:41:09,720 So, yep, there you go. 867 00:41:09,720 --> 00:41:12,960 SwiftUI Core Image by Dan Wood. 868 00:41:12,960 --> 00:41:14,040 - And so I think that brings us 869 00:41:14,040 --> 00:41:16,440 to the end of today's episode. 870 00:41:16,440 --> 00:41:18,720 And actually this will be, as I mentioned, 871 00:41:18,720 --> 00:41:21,280 at the end of last week's episode, 872 00:41:21,280 --> 00:41:23,000 or the last episode that we published. 873 00:41:23,000 --> 00:41:28,000 This will be the last podcast that we record in 2023. 874 00:41:28,000 --> 00:41:32,920 So I wanna wish everybody happy holidays 875 00:41:32,920 --> 00:41:35,720 and thank you for listening this year. 876 00:41:35,720 --> 00:41:38,120 It's been something that I've really enjoyed 877 00:41:38,120 --> 00:41:40,600 doing again this year, 878 00:41:40,600 --> 00:41:44,920 and I'm happy to see that it's gaining some traction 879 00:41:44,920 --> 00:41:47,040 and people mention it more and more. 880 00:41:47,040 --> 00:41:50,680 And so really happy to kind of see it 881 00:41:50,680 --> 00:41:52,560 find its feet a little bit. 882 00:41:52,560 --> 00:41:53,680 Because when we started this, 883 00:41:53,680 --> 00:41:56,000 we didn't really know what it would become. 884 00:41:56,000 --> 00:41:58,200 We started this actually as Twitter Spaces, 885 00:41:58,200 --> 00:42:03,200 and it was a very low effort affair at the beginning. 886 00:42:04,280 --> 00:42:09,280 We just jumped on, no attention paid to audio quality 887 00:42:09,280 --> 00:42:14,880 or indeed the quality of the content that we talked about, 888 00:42:14,880 --> 00:42:17,720 which has remained, as you've heard today. 889 00:42:17,720 --> 00:42:20,200 But we didn't really know where it would go. 890 00:42:20,200 --> 00:42:23,160 And as we come to the end of 2023, 891 00:42:23,160 --> 00:42:25,960 I think it's worth just kind of saying 892 00:42:25,960 --> 00:42:27,720 thank you so much for listening. 893 00:42:27,720 --> 00:42:28,840 Please do, if you enjoy it, 894 00:42:28,840 --> 00:42:32,520 please do share the podcast with other people 895 00:42:32,520 --> 00:42:35,320 and we'll be back next year. 896 00:42:35,320 --> 00:42:36,400 - Yeah, thanks for listening. 897 00:42:36,400 --> 00:42:38,400 Do let us know if you have questions, comments, 898 00:42:38,400 --> 00:42:40,480 always love to hear what people think 899 00:42:40,480 --> 00:42:43,400 or if you have questions, ask us and we'll address it. 900 00:42:43,400 --> 00:42:47,640 And yeah, happy holidays and see you next year. 901 00:42:47,640 --> 00:42:48,680 - See you next year. 902 00:42:48,680 --> 00:42:50,800 Bye-bye. - Bye-bye.