Swift for Visual Studio Code is version 0.1. The extension marked as preview is intended to allow the use of the programming language developed by Apple in Microsoft’s open source source code editor Visual Studio Code. Thus, it should offer an alternative to use with Apple’s development environment Xcode, which can only be used on devices with macOS. The extension is under development by members of the Swift community and under the supervision of the Swift Server Work Group (SSWG).
Features of the extension
The expansion for VS Code announced in the Swift forum is still in an early phase, but can already come up with some functions. Among other things, it offers code completion, error annotations or automatic task creation. To complete the code, the extension uses SourceKit-LSP, an implementation of the Language Server Protocol (LSP) for Swift- and C-based languages. For debugging, it relies on the Visual Studio code extension CodeLLDB, which is used for native debugging of compiled languages.
Interoperability and speed
Swift is a programming language launched by Apple in 2014 that is intended as an alternative to the existing Objective-C language and can be used in parallel in a project. Swift is available open-source and integrated into Apple’s Xcode development environment – the current language version 5.5.2 is available in Xcode 13.2. The advantages of the programming language should include its speed due to the LLVM compiler infrastructure used, and security features such as the initialization of variables before they are used are also integrated.
All further information on using Swift in VS Code can be found in the extension’s GitHub repository. It is available for download in the Visual Studio Marketplace.
(May)