Chapter 2. Discovering New Territories – Linux at Last!
Until recently, developing for Swift meant you needed a Mac, loaded with the Xcode IDE. However, all of that changed when Apple open sourced the Swift programming language in December 2015. A brave new world has been opened to us as developers, as Swift can now run on Linux! In addition, you now have access to preview releases and have direct access to the development trunk from which you can download development snapshots (for example, non-official prebuilt binaries of Swift).
This is going to be a packed chapter, and I want to highlight what we will cover. My goal is to show you where to find the latest Swift source for both Mac and Linux. I will also provide instruction on how to use toolchains and explain how the Swift package manager works. Last, we will develop our first program on Linux.
