New features in Swift 5

Generated on 9/15/2024

1 search

In Swift 5, one of the most significant new features was the introduction of the stable ABI (Application Binary Interface) on Apple platforms. This change meant that app developers no longer needed to bundle a complete copy of the Swift standard library with their apps, resulting in smaller download sizes. Instead, the Swift standard library became part of the operating system itself, optimized for that OS and shared across all Swift apps and frameworks. This allowed developers to use the full expressive power of Swift to build better and safer APIs and frameworks.

Additionally, Swift 5.10 introduced complete concurrency checking, which included improvements to data race checking to ensure safety. This version also allowed for passing non-sendable values across active isolation boundaries, enhancing the concurrency model introduced in earlier versions.

For more details on Swift's evolution and new features, you can refer to the session What’s new in Swift.