Ask HN: Those building Swift apps without touching Xcode, what is your workflow?

It's one thing having to download this monstrosity, and a whole other, having to use it daily to write code.

18 points | by p5v 3 days ago

10 comments

  • brudgers 3 days ago
    https://www.swift.org/documentation/articles/zero-to-swift-e...

    You could probably use Emacs for Swift...just like for about every other language.

    Whether you still must download a monstrosity is left as an exercise for the reader.

    • whynotmaybe 3 days ago
      I'm using flutter and had to download xcode to build the app so I guess it's a necessary step.
      • skyberrys 2 days ago
        I'm using flutter too, I've found a website called codemagic, so I can make builds for iOS. My laptop is windows. The bulk of development is building for Android.
  • mimiclone 3 days ago
    It's nearly impossible to get away from Xcode entirely. You will always need the simulator and probably some entitlement / asset tools. What you can do is write the bulk of your app as an SPM package using your editor of choice, and then include that as a local or GitHub repo dependency in your Xcode shell app (which has no code, just assets, preview assets and plist files)
  • late_night_fix 2 days ago
    I feel like most Xcode free-swift setups still secretly depends on xcodebuild for anything real.
  • sandruso 3 days ago
    I had xcede[0] setup that worked well.

    [0] https://codeberg.org/luxmentis/xcede

  • indemnity 3 days ago
    I use Xcode, but just to run the app with Command-R so I can see log messages or stack traces if I need to drop it into the agent for analysis. Everything else is done by Claude Code / Codex.

    I even read the source using Zed not Xcode :)

  • trymamboapp 2 days ago
    tauri 2 + rust + webview give you a native feeling if you don't need any Apple frameworks
    • hackermanai 2 days ago
      > .. webview ..

      That would make it an web app tho. Not sure if that's what OP wants when making Swift apps.

  • Kyosuke1008 2 days ago
    [flagged]
  • 21-DOT-DEV 2 days ago
    [dead]
  • taraharris 3 days ago
    [dead]
  • IVski 2 days ago
    [dead]