[swift-build-dev] Feature request: Scripting support for Swift

[Maxim Veksler]

Hi,

Ayaka Nonaka gave a talk[1] about basic scripting[2] support in Swift.

The gist of the idea is to use #!/usr/bin/env xcrun swift

Therefor it seems the basic building blocks for allowing a swift file to
"execute itself" are always laid out and proved to be applicable.

What's missing IMHO is a better support for dependencies, the suggested
solutions in the talk are using the -F for including frameworks that were
built using Carthage or CocoaPods. That's not idle because a script I think
should be self contained, meaning that you can "just run it" and it works.

So, I'm wondering what if it was possible to include the dependencies
inside the swift file itself? Probably using the same format as the
Package.swift syntax. The the swift binary would "detect" that it's a self
contained file, it could make this distinction because import
PackageDescription is defined by the user.

Then it would follow a 3 step process:
1. It should download and build the dependencies
2. then compile the code inside the file
3. and then run it.

Having everything happening behind the scenes, so the "script user" simply
calls ./MyScript.swift or swift MyScript.swift and it "just works".

Wondering what the community thinks.

[1] https://realm.io/news/swift-scripting/
[2] https://github.com/ayanonagon/talks/tree/master/2015-swiftsummit/2
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