This year’s Swift Mentorship Program just wrapped up, and I’m happy to say that it’s now the third year I have participated as a mentor for the Swift Package Index project. It’s something I really enjoy doing, and it is a great opportunity to show that open-source work isn’t as scary as it might seem.

This year, I worked with Cyndi Chin, and one of her goals was to work on a feature from start to finish. As we chatted about what that meant, we landed on it covering everything from designing the feature through implementing it on both the front and back end, and finally, writing the feature launch blog post! When Cyndi says “start to finish”, she means it. 😱

The feature that Cyndi designed and shipped is for package authors rather than people looking for packages. It makes the package score that partially affects the order of search results transparent and visible and adds two more score metrics, which is something I’ve wished we had for a long time. I won’t go into detail here, as you should read Cyndi’s launch post on the Swift Package Index blog instead.

Working with Cyndi was an absolute pleasure, and what she achieved over the last 12 weeks is a valuable step forward for the Swift Package Index. Thank you Cyndi!

I’d also like to recommend that if you’re involved with any Swift open-source project and haven’t yet participated in the Swift Mentorship Program, you keep an eye on the swiftmentorship tag on the Swift Forums. The programme usually gets announced in July. 🚀

Dave Verwer  

Stream

Stream makes it easy for you to seamlessly integrate real-time experiences into your application. Check out our Swift tutorial to learn how you can get started adding video or in-app messaging to your apps!

getstream.io  

Progress toward the Swift 6 language mode

It has been a while since we’ve heard anything about Swift 6, but that changed earlier this week when Holly Borla announced a narrowing of scope to focus on data-race safety in the upcoming major version. The pace of features in the 5.x releases has been a little overwhelming, so I’m not sad to hear this!

swift.org  

Missing Xcode run test buttons

I would love this bug to be fixed, but until that happens, I’m glad to have this workaround from Paul Samuels. I have also noticed a similar bug where sometimes the test buttons are there but do nothing when clicked, and ⌘⌥⇧U no longer runs the currently focused test.

paul-samuels.com  

On-Crash Backtraces in Swift

This is huge news for Swift on Linux, which means it’s huge news for Swift on the server. I know we have been waiting eagerly for this to become available to further diagnose the issue we discussed on a recent episode of the Swift Package Indexing podcast. 🎉

swift.org  

Hierarchical background styles in SwiftUI

I was so happy to see all these colour utility methods come to iOS and friends with this year’s releases. Thanks to Natalia Panferova for writing up a quick guide on them!

nilcoalescing.com  

GeometryReader: Blessing or Curse?

Did you hear someone say something bad about GeometryReader? Does that make you feel guilty when you use one? 😱 This lengthy post from fatbobman will teach you plenty about the subtleties of what you’ve heard. 👍

betterprogramming.pub  

Displaying a Photo Picker

Chase Lewis:

Did you know that Apple created a way for SwiftUI to access the users photos without requesting permission, and it still ensures privacy for the user?

I did not! You’ll want to read this if you’re in the same boat as I was.

medium.com  

Escaping particles with visionOS

This is an interesting idea from James Swiney. I love how the particles transition out of the “screen”, but I also wonder what it would look like with pixel art in the window and more realistic effects outside it. 🤔

mastodon.social  

iOS Developer @ KURZ Digital Solutions GmbH – Join KURZ Digital Solutions! Take the lead in developing innovative apps as an iOS developer and explore modern technologies in a dynamic team. Experience a culture of learning and creativity that combines tradition and digital innovation. – Remote (within European timezones) with some on-site work (Germany)

Senior iOS Engineer @ Luma AI – We are a small AI research and product company working on new kinds of creative tools for 3D. Our mission is to democratize the 3D experience for all. iOS at Luma is at the center of the product universe. We are growing the iOS team from 1-4, please reach out if you're interested! – On-site (United States in CA) with some remote work (within US timezones)

Would you like to see your company’s open positions listed above? Post your job over on iOS Dev Jobs, and check out with a “Featured Listing”, and they’ll be here next week!

I’ve re-hosted the original website, so you can see what passed for app marketing in the early App Store.

What a lovely story ❤️