how does swift 6 compare to swift 5

Swift 6 introduces several significant improvements over Swift 5, focusing on enhancing portability, performance, and the overall developer experience. Here are some key differences and new features in Swift 6 compared to Swift 5:

1. Data Race Safety:

   • Swift 6: Introduces a new language mode that provides compile-time data race safety, helping to write correct concurrent programs. This mode is opt-in and can be adopted incrementally, module by module (Platforms State of the Union).
   • Swift 5: While it included concurrency features like async/await and actors, it did not provide the same level of compile-time data race safety as Swift 6 (What’s new in Swift).

2. Non-Copyable Types:

   • Swift 6: Introduces non-copyable types, which are types that cannot be copied, enhancing memory management and performance (What’s new in Swift).

3. Embedded Swift:

   • Swift 6: Introduces a new language subset called Embedded Swift, designed to run on highly constrained systems like operating system kernels and microcontrollers (What’s new in Swift).

4. Concurrency Improvements:

   • Swift 6: Enhances concurrency features, including improvements to generics and low-level synchronization primitives (Platforms State of the Union).

5. Swift Testing:

   • Swift 6: Introduces a new testing framework called Swift Testing, built from the ground up for Swift, with expressive APIs to simplify writing tests (Platforms State of the Union).

6. Incremental Adoption:

   • Swift 6: Allows for incremental adoption of the new language mode, meaning developers can migrate their codebase module by module without needing to update all dependencies at once (Migrate your app to Swift 6).

7. GitHub Organization:

   • Swift 6: The Swift project will be moving to a new organization on GitHub, which will include the Swift Compiler foundation and many more ecosystem packages (What’s new in Swift).

These enhancements make Swift 6 a more robust, safe, and efficient language for modern app development, especially in concurrent programming and performance-sensitive applications.