No, neither "just install a tarball" nor "just install this docker image" count.
Outside of C/C++/Fortran pretty much every project I see on Github prefers things like Rustup or Nix for toolchains to navigate around Debian/Ubuntu/RHEL’s “stability” approach.
And for any language that's stable enough to be worth using, "3 years old" is good enough.
Mostly I hear “stability”, but I have encountered far more frustrations dealing with 3 year old software as a developer, than I ever have dealing with 6 month old software. If I have good test coverage, a way to deterministically reproduce my build environment, reliable CI, and a way to release packages and bugfixes to my users quickly, it seems the risk & blast radius of a 6 month old toolchain is quite limited.
Python is by some measures the most popular programming language, its first release was in 1991, and over the last 3 years performance improved significantly, see https://lost.co.nz/articles/sixteen-years-of-python-performa...
I imagine the only case I want an ancient toolchain is if I’m building libraries or software predominantly consumed by Debian stable or RHEL users / system package ecosystem, or I am doing some kind of high-assurance thing involving formal verification where I’m probably using a non-distro verified toolchain instead. I’ve never been too interested in either of those domains though.
swiftly is a CLI tool for installing, managing, and switching between Swift toolchains, written in Swift. swiftly itself is designed to be extremely easy to install and get running, and its command interface is intended to be flexible while also being simple to use. The overall experience is inspired by and meant to feel reminiscent of the Rust toolchain manager rustup.
That hasn't prevented Linux to take over most UNIX workloads.
Anyway, you probably missed the following
https://www.swift.org/install/linux/
I see packages for all major distros there.
But people will probably mention some distro not listed and say the mainstream distro support is a farce. For some reason people have set the bar for Swift incredibly unrealistically high and there will always be something wrong it.
Your loss though. Swift is amazing. Both on MacOS and Linux.
That's not what I call "actually usable on non-Apple systems".
