Saleem Abdulrasool

PL/Compiler Engineer, xplat Swift, & Swift Core Team Member @ @browsercompany (ex @GoogleAI, @facebook, @Microsoft)

[Leo G Dion @leogdion]

Before Windows, @compnerd got Swift running on Android, did a PlayStation port, and laid early groundwork for embedded Swift.
In the latest episode, he shares his journey of porting Swift to Windows one patch at a time.
https://t.co/BbmvFgMS1F

[Saleem Abdulrasool @compnerd]

@leogdion Thanks for having me @leogdion! It was a pleasure sitting down and chatting with you about Swift :)

[Saleem Abdulrasool @compnerd]

@ShikiSuen @bengi_dev @SwiftLang I’ve worked on Swift for Android and other platforms as well :) You are correct that the package is platform agnostic.

[Swift Language @SwiftLang]

Thanks to @compnerd, we have a new Swift XML parser! 🌿

Xylem is pure Swift, zero dependencies, covering SAX, DOM, and XPath 1.0. This is the kind of infrastructure work that helps Swift thrive everywhere! 🎉 https://t.co/1jojEv2TL9

[Saleem Abdulrasool @compnerd]

@bengi_dev @SwiftLang No, this has nothing to do with SwiftUI, it is just a standalone XML parser.

[Saleem Abdulrasool @compnerd]

@yukkuri_lab @bitsydoge @bztree @tsoding @clattner_llvm These are the common controls from windows, with the updated manifest for the latest version. I think that it’s more that it is the traditional Win32 rather than the XAML based UI like in WinUI.

[Saleem Abdulrasool @compnerd]

@rsms @awesomekling @ladybirdbrowser You can always cross compile. The compiler builds and runs on macOS, Linux, and Windows. At @browsercompany we are working on cross compilation from Windows to other environments including Android. Building any modern C++ compiler for a new system is likely as involved IMO.

[Saleem Abdulrasool @compnerd]

@hursh @Ramborambowski @awesomekling @ladybirdbrowser @SwiftLang @browsercompany It depends on @Ramborambowski's goals; the swappable RT would allow you to build with a custom C++ runtime but wouldn't integrate into the system as well. That is joint work between @hypst, @egor_zhdan, and myself. Can point you to the PRs if you want.

[Andreas Kling @awesomekling]

We've been evaluating a number of C++ successor languages for @ladybirdbrowser, and the one best suited to our needs appears to be @SwiftLang 🪶

Over the last few months, I've asked a bunch of folks to pick some little part of our project and try rewriting it in the different languages we were evaluating. The feedback was very clear: everyone preferred Swift!

Why do we like Swift?

First off, Swift has both memory & data race safety (as of v6). It's also a modern language with solid ergonomics.

Something that matters to us a lot is OO. Web specs & browser internals tend to be highly object-oriented, and life is easier when you can model specs closely in your code. Swift has first-class OO support, in many ways even nicer than C++.

The Swift team is also investing heavily in C++ interop, which means there's a real path to incremental adoption, not just gigantic rewrites.

Strong ties to Apple?

Swift has historically been strongly tied to Apple and their platforms, but in the last year, there's been a push for "swiftlang" to become more independent. (It's now in a separate GitHub org, no longer in "apple", for example).

Support for non-Apple platforms is also improving, as is the support for other, LSP-based development environments.

What happens next?

We aren't able to start using it just yet, as the current release of Swift ships with a version of Clang that's too old to grok our existing C++ codebase. But when Swift 6 comes out of beta this fall, we will begin using it!

No language is perfect, and there are a lot of things here that we don't know yet. I'm not aware of anyone doing browser engine stuff in Swift before, so we'll probably end up with feedback for the Swift team as well.

I'm super excited about this! We must steer Ladybird towards memory safety, and the first step is selecting a successor language that we can begin adopting very soon. 🤓🐞

[Saleem Abdulrasool @compnerd]

@jon_roelofs @barrelshifter Why do you hate "someone" so much? Every time I have to review that code, I silently sob at the horror.

[Saleem Abdulrasool @compnerd]

@barrelshifter Ugh, that seems wrong. CMake should be able to test and identify the signature of the function to get that correct.

[Saleem Abdulrasool @compnerd]

@barrelshifter Yeah, the code is pretty well structured. I’m just not sure what the benefit would be, unless the purpose is to play with newer C++ constructs.

[Saleem Abdulrasool @compnerd]

@barrelshifter So, by modernizing do you mean just taking advantage of some of the newer C++ features like constexpr?

[Saleem Abdulrasool @compnerd]

@mronge When bringing an entire ecosystem to a new environment, polishing the solution takes time. I believe that Swift's tradeoffs makes it the best choice for most applications, but business sometimes dictates a different choice.

[Saleem Abdulrasool @compnerd]

@EricWaffles @joshm @browsercompany We would love to have more collaborators on the tools! A small sample:
WinUI Bindings @ https://t.co/EDcLFX3Mb1
Firebase Interface @ https://t.co/q8LsRIOjkb
Toolchain Builds @ https://t.co/W1blAdi0Eu
UI Testing Infrastructure @ https://t.co/cAFrjpgEsl

[Saleem Abdulrasool @compnerd]

@EricWaffles @joshm @browsercompany We are ecstatic to share the product with everyone! We have been developing the tooling in public and have been sharing them back with the community. @browsercompany really does believe in Swift for x-plat development and would love to have others along on the journey.

[Josh Miller @joshm]

🪟Arc for Windows Update🪟

🧪 ~100k beta testers onboarded
📈 ~1 million people on waitlist
📅 Opening to GA before Summer
🥇 1st major Windows app built in Swift

Shoutout to @alexandracoding and the team!

[Saleem Abdulrasool @compnerd]

We’ve talked before about how we run Swift code on Windows, but we haven’t talked about how we write Swift code on Windows.

We're starting today!

https://t.co/rAsmTq1E0i

[Saleem Abdulrasool @compnerd]

It wasn't that long ago when Swift on Windows felt like a risk, but now our Windows app is in the hands of 80,000 + members, and our devs are able to write Swift as productively as ever!

Today, we published a post going over the Swift ecosystem on Windows.

Link below👇