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Last week's "one question" Swift Package Manager survey wasn't on the same scale as the full community survey, but it was a nice update on how people feel about the SPM. As promised, here are the raw results. Thanks for taking the time to fill in the survey!

There were also a couple of optional, free text questions, so let me summarise those too. The most significant technical complaints about the SPM were:

  1. Not being able to (easily) check in your dependencies alongside your source code. I'm a firm believer that wherever possible, your source code repository should contain all of the source code required to build your app, so I'm 100% on board with this one!
  2. Xcode being a black box around checking out package dependencies and the technical issues that can cause. I agree with this too, but it seems like less of a fundamental problem and is something that future releases of Xcode can fix. I have high hopes for Xcode 12 when it comes to SPM support. 🀞

So, what about non-technical issues? Many people also felt that the lack of a "CocoaPods style" centralised repository of packages was a downside, and I very much agree! πŸ˜‚ That said, it's not something that I ever see Apple taking on. They've always been ultra-cautious about recommending third-party code, and even though a centralised package list doesn't implicitly mean recommendation, I don't see them wanting to solve this problem.

However, by far the biggest issue facing the Swift Package Manager that came across loud and clear is that neither of the other dependency managers are broken, and it's a big job to change the dependency manager for a large project. Then, think about the fact that switching dependency managers doesn't necessarily come with any tangible benefits, and the time needed to do it is hard to justify.

I'm still confident SPM will become the dominant choice for managing dependencies in iOS apps at some point, but CocoaPods and Carthage are going to be with us for a very long time. πŸ“¦

Dave Verwer  

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And finally...

This is my favourite WWDC wishlist πŸ˜‚