what's new for swift 6

Asked on 2025-03-03

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Swift 6 introduces several new features and improvements that enhance the language's capabilities and developer experience. Here are some of the key updates:

  1. Non-Copyable Types: Swift 6 introduces non-copyable types, which suppress the default copyability of Swift types. This is useful for scenarios requiring unique ownership, such as managing system resources like files. Non-copyable types help prevent runtime issues like multiple writers to the same file and resource leaks. What’s new in Swift

  2. Data Race Safety: A significant feature in Swift 6 is the new language mode that provides compile-time data race safety. This mode is opt-in and helps diagnose concurrent access to memory, making concurrent programming easier and safer. You can adopt this mode incrementally, module by module. Platforms State of the Union

  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. Swift Testing: A new testing framework named Swift Testing has been introduced, offering expressive APIs to simplify writing tests. Platforms State of the Union

  5. Improved Concurrency and Generics: Swift 6 includes improvements to concurrency and generics, further enhancing the language's performance and safety.

These updates make Swift 6 a more robust and versatile language, particularly for concurrent programming and systems with constrained resources.