Hi everyone,
One of the goals for Swift 5 is to start laying the *groundwork* for a
concurrency model.
>From https://github.com/apple/swift-evolution:
> Laying groundwork for a new concurrency model. We will lay groundwork for a
> new concurrency model, especially as needed for ABI stability. Finalizing
> such a model, however, is a non-goal for Swift 5. A key focus area will be on
> designing language affordances for creating and using asynchronous APIs and
> dealing with the problems created by callback-heavy code.
Concurrency is a topic with many axes of design to explore, as the different
domains we wish Swift to be successful will place different demands on a model.
That exploration will take time: there will be tradeoffs with any model, and
evaluating those tradeoffs will take discussion and iteration.
Today I’d like to open up swift-evolution to start some discussions about
concurrency. Some of those discussions will focus on broader designs and
concerns, and some will focus on specific use cases which we want to work great
in Swift. Some opinions will likely differ significantly in the directions we
should take — that’s fine. We intentionally want to explore different design
spaces here, as a concurrency model for Swift has far reaching impact in the
long-term on Swift as a language.
To kick things off, Chris Lattner has been sharing privately with a few people
his own ideas for concurrency, which I have encouraged him to send out after
this email. These are just his ideas and **not** an official plan of record,
but beyond having some interesting points to discuss I think the way he has
framed some of his thinking is a good model for others to follow when bringing
up alternate design directions — which I encourage people to do.
Once the Discourse forum comes online (which we are making progress on) we will
likely tag or somehow segregate/mark discussions related to concurrency so they
can easily be found. For now, one useful trick is to add “[Concurrency]” to
the subject line, and when we move to the forum we’ll look to correctly tagging
them.
Cheers,
Ted
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