>> - runtime libraries for Swift 4
>> - all system frameworks will need to contain two variants - one compatible
>> with Swift 4 and one with Swift 5. This is IMHO absolutely unmaintainable in
>> the long run. For how long would you need to keep several versions of the
>> framework around? What happens when Swift 6 comes along with another
>> breaking changes? Would each system framework have 3 versions embedded?
>
> That's right. If the OS frameworks use Swift then either (1) you have to
> clone the framework stack for each Swift version, or (2) you have only one
> copy of the frameworks but frameworks and apps can't share their Swift
> objects or publish Swift API.
>
> The framework structure that Apple inherited from NeXT supports framework
> versioning, but *no frameworks use it*. It doesn't scale.
sure, it's preferable to have a single version that works with all apps — but
if it's technically possible to have one clone installed with the OS, isn't
that better than one version for each app?
Managing several versions shouldn't be that hard (have a look at
https://nixos.org/nix/ <https://nixos.org/nix/>).
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