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Comment by Doctor_Fegg | Hacker News Reader

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Doctor_Fegg·

> The first beta of Swift 5.2 just landed with Xcode 11.4 beta

> Xcode 11.4 requires a Mac running macOS Catalina

Shit.

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So much for semver. This should be a breaking change warranting an Xcode 12 major version.

It's been pretty standard for the last several years that the ~.3/4 Xcode point release increases the minimum macOS version.

True, and I've said the same thing every time. The status quo's fucked up.

Indeed. Generally the new macOS hasn't been a flaming dumpster fire though.

A new version of the language shouldn't require a new IDE.

It doesn't, you can download toolchains from swift.org or build them yourselves and load them into your old version of Xcode.

But you're not allowed to submit apps to the stores with unofficial toolchains.

> It doesn't, you can download toolchains from swift.org or build them yourselves and load them into your old version of Xcode.

IIRC, the toolchain checks the versions of SDKs shipped in the installed Xcode and refuse to compile your source code if anything's not up to date.

> But you're not allowed to submit apps to the stores with unofficial toolchains.

Not sure this is true. Apple does not allow you to copy/run Xcode from non-Apple hardware. Other than that, submitting an app built with an OSS toolchain should be fine.

See the note at the bottom: "Apps uploaded to iTunes Connect must be built using the default toolchain."

https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/To...

Really obviates the supposedly open nature of the language.

Not really. They just require certain compiler builds to ship on their app store.

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