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Apple yesterday released the first preview build of Swift 3.0, a major update to Apple's open source Swift programming language. Swift 3.0's official release is expected to come in late 2016 after proposed changes are finalized.
The Swift 3.0 preview can be downloaded from the official Swift website. There are versions of Swift 3.0 available for Xcode 7.2, Ubuntu 14.04, and Ubuntu 15.10.
Swift 3.0 is not source compatible with Swift 2.2 as it introduces source-breaking changes, but going forward, the goal is to make Swift 3.0 source compatible with future Swift language updates. To meet that goal, Swift 3.0 "focuses on getting the basics right for the long term."
Apple will likely show off Swift 3.0 at its upcoming Worldwide Developers Conference, debuting it alongside iOS 10, OS X 10.12, and new versions of tvOS and watchOS.
Update 5/2: Apple tells iMore it did not release a preview of Swift 3.0, it was instead an automated build. The links have been removed.
Apple clarified for iMore that what we thought was a preview release of Swift 3.0 was, in fact, just an automated build. The computer-generated name caused some confusion, but it's meant as a place where outside developers can submit work in preparation for a preview release of Swift 3. There have been no new previews or releases, and the links have been removed. We've likewise updated this story.
Top Rated Comments
The Open-Source Mach microkernel first release was in 1985.
That's because Apple doesn't own Swift any more; it's open-source. I've contributed to the project, and Apple doesn't own my contributions. Just like C, any platform can use the language. The feeling that it 'belongs' to Apple and that it's somehow an outrageous, juicy story that Google may officially support it is just plain wrong. It makes a lot of sense for Google to support it - they've been creating their own flailing programming languages to try and solve these same problems, and they hire lots of exceptionally bright engineers who would be assets to the project.
Back in the day, we were all using the same C language and competition and innovation was rife. We don't need every company to have their own programming language; we need a modern language that's as universal, as fast, and as well-supported as C.
(Cue the groans for a very bad pun.)
If you have valid points then you are free to present them to the Swift community for inclusion into Swift.
Frankly the last people on earth we should give affordances to is PHP developers.