I think this is a timely discussion.  I’ve been working on putting together 
packages for Fedora and RHEL/CentOS 6/7.  The RHEL series tends to be quite 
slow on updating packages so building is a bit tricky.  It would be nice if 
users at swift.org had just a quick reference to where the packages could be 
pulled from if desired.


I’ll post to this list when the rpm’s are available for general use.


Happy New Year!


Jeremy Fergason



> On Dec 29, 2016, at 11:07 AM, Thomas Catterall via swift-dev 
> <swift-dev@swift.org> wrote:
> 
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> 
> You might want to settle down with a glass of eggnog to read this, it's a 
> long one.
> 
> 
> Myself and Haris Amin (CC'd), as you may know, have been building a community 
> of users who want to use Swift inside Docker containers 
> (https://github.com/swiftdocker/docker-swift
> ) and maintain an image, swiftdocker/swift, that provides a complete Swift 
> installation that is usable for all kinds of applications, from trying a 
> Linux REPL to running a webserver (I've already deployed one).
> 
> 
> We've been contacted by a content evangelist at Docker who would like to 
> offer an "official" Docker image that contains Swift. You can read more about 
> official Docker images here: 
> https://docs.docker.com/docker-hub/official_repos/
> . Note that these are official in Docker Inc.'s view: they don't necessarily 
> exist as officially supported by, for instance, PyPy developers, but they are 
> a great starting point and exhibit best practices. Docker is interested in 
> having Haris and I maintain the image we have been building as the official 
> repository. There's a lot of benefits to having an official Docker image, 
> namely enhanced security, scrutiny, support, and a spotlight on a great new 
> language that can drive adoption.
> 
> 
> Haris and I are incredibly thankful for the hard work Swift's core team have 
> put into the open sourcing of the language and in that spirit we are very 
> reluctant to proceed without the core team's blessing. The important thing to 
> note is that this endeavour would involve little to no work on the core 
> team's side, except perhaps a note on the Downloads page saying that this is 
> a community supported project and not one officially supported by the core 
> team.
> 
> 
> This brings to a head something that's been rumbling for a while: how exactly 
> does the Swift Project "bless" alternative distributions or platforms? For 
> instance, the recent work on compiling to ARM for the Raspberry Pi is a 
> worthy project, notably for the Pi's adoption in educational environments. 
> BSD systems are another area of great interest. Furthermore, I doubt it will 
> be long before someone wants to provide a Swift package through apt-get, 
> homebrew etc. While those contributors may have less qualms about wanting the 
> Swift team's blessing, it makes sense that there is some degree of centrality 
> to ensure people do not work independently towards the same goal for a 
> particular platform.
> 
> 
> For the matter at hand, Haris and I would like to at the least hear "go for 
> it" from the core team; better yet, we'd love to have anyone from the core 
> team/Apple who is interested in Docker/the build infrastructure to join 
> Haris, Docker and I in creating this official repo, and serving as a 
> representative of Apple's interests in this area.
> 
> 
> For the larger matter, it seems to me that the Swift Project can take a few 
> directions:
> 1. "Knock yourselves out, but we're just making the language." In this 
> direction, the Swift Project would disclaim official support or blessing of 
> anything that doesn't come out of it. Occupation of a top level namespace or 
> being the "official" Swift for a platform would be something for the 
> community to sort out independently with the platform vendor.
> 2. "Knock yourselves out, here's a list of all the current efforts that we 
> think you might be interested in"
> Not so much as blessing, still disclaiming support, but at the least 
> acknowledging the ecosystem around Swift for other platforms besides OS X and 
> the two Ubuntus.
> 3. Blessing: in this direction, which I think a lot of people would like and 
> I would prefer, the Swift project gives its blessing to projects, and links 
> to them on its website. This has the benefit of centralising development 
> efforts and providing an easy springboard for those who are interested in 
> Swift and are checking the website.
> 4. Official support: in this direction, when a project meets a certain 
> criteria, it is folded into the main Swift project, given a repo on GitHub 
> etc. This would probably not occur for quite a while yet, but as continuous 
> integration improves for Swift it could make sense that the docker image 
> might be something that is actively supported in the development of Swift if 
> it is sufficiently popular.
> 
> 
> I'd like to hear back from the core team about this instance of the Docker 
> issue, but I'd also like to start a conversation about community platform 
> support and how centralising issues like this one can be handled in future.
> 
> 
> Best wishes for the new year,
> 
> 
> Thomas Catterall
> 
> 
> Sent from my iPhone
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