Naming issues is likely one of the two arduous issues in pc science, and Swift 6 has a “naming issues” drawback in the mean time.
We’ve been repeatedly advised that Swift 6 will embrace some adjustments that break supply compatibility with Swift 5.x. That makes good sense, in fact. That’s what a significant semantic model ought to be used for. To this point so good. 👍
However what I stated there doesn’t give the entire image, and that’s the place the naming drawback is available in. There’s the Swift 6 compiler, after which there’s “Swift 6 language mode”, and you’ll undertake the Swift 6 compiler with out adopting the language mode. All of the strict concurrency checks and information race security options are within the language mode, and that brings the breaking adjustments.
You can begin utilizing the Swift 6 compiler now (or extra doubtless when it makes it to a beta/launch model of Xcode) after which opt-in to the language mode whenever you really feel like tackling the breaking adjustments. There’s no imminent deadline respiration down your neck.
None of that is new information. The language mode has been talked about for a very long time, however the distinction is delicate and it handed me by till lately, and chances are you’ll be in the identical state of affairs.
A significantly better particular person to speak about this might be Holly Borla, supervisor of the Swift Compiler Crew, and it simply so occurs we lately had her as a visitor on the Swift Bundle Indexing podcast. It was a pleasure to speak to Holly, and we lined this challenge in depth as considered one of a number of Swift 6 subjects.
For those who don’t already subscribe to the podcast give this episode a hear and think about hitting that subscribe or comply with button in your podcast participant. We discuss Swift (together with server-side), the event of the Swift Bundle Index mission, and bundle ecosystem subjects. We additionally spotlight a number of community-written packages in each episode. Give it a attempt!
Dave Verwer 
