[swift-users] Static linking

[Rod Brown]

In regards to Mac and iOS apps, the dylibs are included because of the lack of ABI stability, which was a goal for Swift 3 that was pushed back due to the really significant changes that occurred in the language.

From what I understand, these dylibs are very light and simply act as binding between the actual frameworks and your code, rather than being their own code. Thus, I expect they’re as heavily optimised as they can be, and are relatively light impact. They were more discussing true frameworks and libraries.

I don’t have any official evidence of this and it’d be something I’d love to get an official comment on too, but this would be my understanding. Also, if they were a significant hit I would have expected them to mention it while they were throwing around their pro-Swift recommendations, as a caveat.


> On 18 Jun 2016, at 8:41 AM, David Beck via swift-users <swift-users at swift.org> wrote:
> 
> In session 406: optimizing app startup time at WWDC, most of the recommendations were very pro Swift. Things like using structs and the fact that it can automatically inline calls. One recommendation that was very anti swift, was the section on limiting dylibs. The presenter recommended keeping it to under 6. I’m not sure if the 15 libswift dylibs that get included by default in a Swift application count towards that (he did mention that Apple frameworks are optimized, but I’m not sure if that is limited to the ones preinstalled on the device).
> 
> His recommendation was to use static libraries, which makes sense, except that Swift on iOS doesn’t seem to support static linking. But for whatever reason, Swift PM ONLY supports static linking. Is there any plans to add static linking to Mac and iOS apps? The only alternative I see at this point is to simply include the source files from libraries in the app’s target, but Swift has from the beginning encouraged naming things generically and relying on modules for name spacing.
> 
> David Beck
> http://davidbeck.co <http://davidbeck.co/>
> http://twitter.com/davbeck <http://twitter.com/davbeck>
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