The Swift Package Manager is a tool for managing the distribution of Swift code. It’s integrated with the Swift build system to automate the process of downloading, compiling, and linking dependencies.
This section describes the basic concepts that motivate the functionality of the Swift Package Manager.
Swift organizes code into modules. Each module specifies a namespace and enforces access controls on which parts of that code can be used outside of the module.
A program may have all of its code in a single module, or it may import other modules as dependencies. Aside from the handful of system-provided modules, such as Darwin on OS X or Glibc on Linux, most dependencies require code to be downloaded and built in order to be used.
When you use a separate module for code that solves a particular problem, that code can be reused in other situations. For example, a module that provides functionality for making network requests can be shared between a photo sharing app and a weather app. Using modules lets you build on top of other developers’ code rather than reimplementing the same functionality yourself.
A package consists of Swift source files and a manifest file.
The manifest file, called Package.swift
,
defines the package’s name and its contents
using the PackageDescription
module.
A package has one or more targets. Each target specifies a product and may declare one or more dependencies.
A target may build either a library or an executable as its product. A library contains a module that can be imported by other Swift code. An executable is a program that can be run by the operating system.
A target’s dependencies are modules that are required by code in the package. A dependency consists of a relative or absolute URL to the source of the package and a set of requirements for the version of the package that can be used. The role of the package manager is to reduce coordination costs by automating the process of downloading and building all of the dependencies for a project. This is a recursive process: A dependency can have its own dependencies, each of which can also have dependencies, forming a dependency graph. The package manager downloads and builds everything that is needed to satisfy the entire dependency graph.
The following section assumes a working knowledge of Swift. If you’re new to the language, you may want consult one of the introductory resources first. We recommend A Swift Tour in The Swift Programming Language.
If you want to follow along with the code examples, you’ll need to have a working installation of Swift. You can find instructions for how to install Swift in Getting Started.
In Getting Started, a simple “Hello, world!” program is built with the Swift Package Manager.
To provide a more complete look at what the Swift Package Manager can do, the following example consists of four interdependent packages:
PlayingCard
, Suit
, and Rank
types.shuffle()
and shuffleInPlace()
methods.Deck
type that shuffles and deals an array of PlayingCard
values.DeckOfPlayingCards
, shuffles it, and deals the first 10 cards.You can build and run the complete example by downloading the source code of the Dealer project from GitHub and running the following commands:
$ cd example-package-dealer $ swift build $ .build/debug/Dealer
We’ll start by creating a module representing
a playing card in a standard 52-card deck.
The PlayingCard
module defines the PlayingCard
type,
which consists of a Suit
enumeration value (Clubs, Diamonds, Hearts, Spades)
and a Rank
enumeration value (Ace, Two, Three, …, Jack, Queen, King).
public enum Rank : Int {
case Ace = 1
case Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten
case Jack, Queen, King
}
public enum Suit: String {
case Spades, Hearts, Diamonds, Clubs
}
public struct PlayingCard {
let rank: Rank
let suit: Suit
}
By convention, a package includes any source files located in the Sources/
directory.
example-package-playingcard
├── Sources
│ ├── PlayingCard.swift
│ ├── Rank.swift
│ └── Suit.swift
└── Package.swift
Because the PlayingCard
module does not produce an executable,
it can be described as a library.
A library is a package that builds a module which can be imported by other packages.
By default, a library module exposes all of the public
types and methods
declared in source code located in the Sources/
directory.
Run swift build
to start the Swift build process.
If everything worked correctly,
it produces the static library PlayingCard.a
in the .build/debug
directory.
example-package-playingcard
└── .build
└── debug
├── PlayingCard.a
├── PlayingCard.o
├── PlayingCard.swiftdoc
└── PlayingCard.swiftmodule
The complete code for the
PlayingCard
package can be found at https://github.com/apple/example-package-playingcard.
The next module you’re going to build is FisherYates
.
Unlike PlayingCard
, this module does not define any new types.
Instead, it extends an existing type –
specifically the CollectionType
and MutableCollectionType
protocols –
to add the shuffle()
method
and its mutating counterpart shuffleInPlace()
.
The implementation of shuffleInPlace()
uses
the Fisher-Yates algorithm
to randomly permute the elements in a collection.
Because the Swift Standard Library does not provide a random number generator,
this method must call a function imported from a system module.
For this function to be compatible with both OS X and Linux,
the code uses build configuration statements.
In OS X, the system module is Darwin
,
which provides the arc4random_uniform(_:)
function.
In Linux, the system module is Glibc
,
which provides the random()
function:
#if os(Linux)
import Glibc
#else
import Darwin.C
#endif
public extension MutableCollectionType where Index == Int {
mutating func shuffleInPlace() {
if count <= 1 { return }
for i in 0..<count - 1 {
#if os(Linux)
let j = Int(random() % (count - i)))) + i
#else
let j = Int(arc4random_uniform(UInt32(count - i))) + i
#endif
if i == j { continue }
swap(&self[i], &self[j])
}
}
}
The complete code for the
FisherYates
package can be found at https://github.com/apple/example-package-fisheryates.
The DeckOfPlayingCards
package brings the previous two packages together:
It defines a Deck
type
that uses the shuffle()
method from FisherYates
on an array of PlayingCard
values.
To use the FisherYates
and PlayingCards
modules,
the DeckOfPlayingCards
package must declare their packages as dependencies
in its Package.swift
manifest file.
import PackageDescription
let package = Package(
name: "DeckOfPlayingCards",
targets: [],
dependencies: [
.Package(url: "https://github.com/apple/example-package-fisheryates.git",
majorVersion: 1),
.Package(url: "https://github.com/apple/example-package-playingcard.git",
majorVersion: 1),
]
)
Each dependency specifies a source URL and version requirements.
The source URL is a URL accessible to the current user that resolves to a Git repository.
The version requirements,
which follow Semantic Versioning (SemVer) conventions,
are used to determine which Git tag to check out and use to build the dependency.
For of both the FisherYates
and PlayingCard
dependencies,
the most recent version with major version equal to 1
(for example, 1.0.0
) will be used.
When the swift build
command is run,
the Package Manager downloads all of the dependencies,
compiles them into static libraries,
and links them to the package module.
This allows DeckOfPlayingCards
to access the public members of its dependent modules
with import
statements.
You can see the downloaded sources in the Packages
directory at the root of your project,
and intermediate build products in the .build
directory at the root of your project.
example-package-deckofplayingcards
├── .build
│ └── debug
│ ├── DeckOfPlayingCards.a
│ ├── DeckOfPlayingCards.o
│ ├── DeckOfPlayingCards.swiftdoc
│ ├── DeckOfPlayingCards.swiftmodule
│ ├── FisherYates.a
│ ├── FisherYates.o
│ ├── FisherYates.swiftdoc
│ ├── FisherYates.swiftmodule
│ ├── PlayingCard.a
│ ├── PlayingCard.o
│ ├── PlayingCard.swiftdoc
│ └── PlayingCard.swiftmodule
└── Packages
└── example-package-fisheryates-1.0.1
│ ├── Package.swift
│ ├── README.md
│ └── Sources
└── example-package-playingcard-1.0.0
├── Package.swift
├── README.md
└── Sources
The Packages
directory contains the cloned repositories of a package’s dependencies.
This allows you to make changes to source code
and push those changes directly back to their origins
without the need for separate top-level clones of each package.
The complete code for the
DeckOfPlayingCards
package can be found at https://github.com/apple/example-package-deckofplayingcards.
With everything else in place,
now you can build the Dealer
module.
The Dealer
module depends on the DeckOfPlayingCards
package,
which in turn depends on the PlayingCard
and FisherYates
packages.
However, because the Swift Package Manager automatically resolves subdependencies,
you only need to declare the DeckOfPlayingCards
package as a dependency.
import PackageDescription
let package = Package(
name: "Dealer",
targets: [],
dependencies: [
.Package(url: "https://github.com/apple/example-package-deckofplayingcards.git",
majorVersion: 1),
]
)
Swift requires that a source file import the modules for any types
that are referenced in code.
For the Dealer
module’s main.swift
file,
the Deck
type from DeckOfPlayingCards
and the PlayingCard
type from PlayingCard
are referenced.
Although the shuffle()
method on the Deck
type
uses the FisherYates
module internally,
that module does not need to be imported in main.swift
.
import PlayingCard
import DeckOfPlayingCards
let numberOfCards = 10
var deck = Deck.standard52CardDeck()
deck.shuffle()
for _ in 1...numberOfCards {
guard let card = deck.deal() else {
print("No More Cards!")
break
}
print(card)
}
By convention, a package containing a file named main.swift
in its root directory
produces an executable.
Running the swift build
command
starts the Swift build system
to produce the Dealer
executable,
which can be run from the .build/debug
directory.
$ swift build
$ ./.build/debug/Dealer
♠︎6
♢K
♢2
♡8
♠︎7
♣︎10
♣︎5
♢A
♡Q
♡7
The complete code for the
Dealer
package can be found at https://github.com/apple/example-package-dealer.
For more information about using the Swift Package Manager, see the documentation provided in the Swift Package Manager project on GitHub.
The initial release of the Swift Package manager is just a starting point, and we invite you to get involved and help build the best tool possible.
To help you get started with the project, we have prepared the following Community Proposal, which provides some context for decisions made in the current implementation, and offers direction for the development of future features. If you are interested in getting involved, this is the first document you should read.