I am talking about "official" support here. Enterprises are not going to risk using an unofficial port. And unless there is a large scale adoption, it will become another niche language which only the enthusiasts would care about.
More importantly, it needs to happen while Swift still has momentum. Once a language gets old enough, it builds a certain kind of reputation. Once that happens, it is almost impossible to introduce it into new domains.
You can take a look at what IBM has been doing in this space, but in general I'm not sure what you are asking for. Do you expect Apple to release a fully-baked Windows port?
It's a free project that is open-source. Cross-platform support will come from contributions by individual developers, testers, and documentation writers, or companies who find some strategic value in supporting it.
Sitting back and saying "I wish" seems a bit entitled, no? I'm not being glib, I really am saying if you want to see better Swift support on platform X then start contributing. Swift Foundation needs help filling out implementations on Linux and Windows. For the more adventurous you can contribute directly to the standard library or compiler.
Since when did wishing for something mean someone is entitled to something?
“I wish it would stop raining.”
“I wish they'd launch it soon.”
Do any of these statements mean the speaker is entitled to something? Since when did wishing for something become a bad thing?
I am not expecting Apple to release anything. I am hoping for swift.org to one day proclaim that the toolchain and the libraries are available on Windows and other platforms. What I am expecting Apple to do is get behind its own language. I mentioned in another post in this thread -- it is not just about technical work. A lot of it has to do with marketing/evangalism. While individual contributors can help, it takes the backing of large company to get something adopted at a large scale. Why do you think Go succeeded while languages like Nim, D etc are not being adopted as well? What I expect from Apple is to spare a couple of people for the purpose of giving talks, writing blogs etc in addition to working on Swift -- something like what Rob Pike et al have been doing for Go. From what I understand, Apple writes a lot of their backend stuff in Java. Perhaps they could start investing in Swift on server side and open source some of the frameworks/libraries they come up with?
> I really am saying if you want to see better Swift support on platform X then start contributing.
I want to get Swift adopted at my workplace for the next project we are working on. I should tell the management I'll start working on it as soon as I get Swift ported to the platform I use. It would go down really well.
What makes you assume I am not contributing in whatever way I can?
> You can take a look at what IBM has been doing in this space, but in general I'm not sure what you are asking for.
IBM has done some good work, alright. But they are the only ones. A lot more work is required If Sipwift were to become a mainstream language.
More importantly, it needs to happen while Swift still has momentum. Once a language gets old enough, it builds a certain kind of reputation. Once that happens, it is almost impossible to introduce it into new domains.