Request for your feedback / current status

[jansorg]

Request For Your Feedback

I'd like to ask for your feedback.

For example, what's the missing feature you need the most to work with the plugin?
Or, what is biggest limitation of the currently available version of Swift Support?

Below, there's a list of features I'm considering to add. What's your favorite?

• Basic support for XCode projects, most likely with the help of xcode-build-server 
• Debugging of Swift binaries using the IDE's debugger user interface, based on Swift's lldb-dap
• Integrating a test runner, supporting XCTest and the new Swift Testing of Swift 6.0
• Additional formatter options based on nicklockwood/SwiftFormat
• Try to make use of sourcekit-lsp's experimental support for building in the background to provide up-to-date results in the editor during editing

Status of Development

The development has been slower and more difficult than I expected.
There are several reasons:

• I'm not an experienced Swift developer myself and I don't know what's really needed to make this a great tool
• It's a complex ecosystem. There are several project models (Swift PM, XCode), there are several test frameworks, there are several platforms and SDKs to support and so on.
• sourcekit-lsp has limitations and doesn't always provide what an integration into JetBrains IDEs needs. The most problematic limitation is that a "swift build" is required before features like code completion or rename work. 

In the meantime, I've rewritten the Language Server integration library for a better integration into the IDE. For example, this will add support for formatting with sourcekit-lsp, which is based on swift-format. The next major update of the plugin will include this feature.

Thank you for your support!

[JohanVase]

I could not get the plugin to work for my iOS project, so support for iOS will receive my vote. It is likely that this is due to the missing "Basic support for Xcode projects", but I honestly do not know if this is the only/easiest way to get iOS projects working...?

[jansorg]

Which features for iOS development do you use the most, e.g. building, running, executing tests?

[JohanVase]

Personally, I use Xcode for building, running and executing tests. But I write all code in AppCode and use refactoring and "find usages" extensively. However, more and more new Xcode features makes development in AppCode difficult since it cannot recognise e.g. Swift Testing files, and property wrappers are also a big problem in AppCode

[jansorg]

When you write code, do you use AppCode's formatter or do you rely on an external formatter and/or linter?

Based the tooling provided by Apple (i.e. sourcekit-lsp), "Find usages" relies on an up-to-date build. There's a "build while editing" thing now in the later versions, but it's only for current versions of the toolchains and experimental. Hopefully I'll find a way to make this work better...
AFAIK JetBrains implemented their own "Find Usage". If you used XCode's find usages (if there's one), do you think AppCode is providing better or worse results?

[JohanVase]

I think AppCode provides much better results than Xcode's "Find usages". There are many places where Xcode do not provide a "Find usages" option, for example on init() method and on classes and protocols. And the way usages are displayed in AppCode is also much easier to read for me (maybe because I used Jetbrains tools for 20 years - it is hard to teach an old dog new tricks 😉).

Also, AppCode has a very nice icon next to protocols and protocol implementations (incuding all its functions) that makes it easy to jump back and forth between the protocol and its implementation. This is also a much missed feature in Xcode.

I use AppCode's formatter for formatting, but I am trying to have approximately the same formatting setup in Xcode and AppCode such that they do not conflict when switching. Also we have SwiftLint to force specific formatting.

[ronniebarker]

For me, I use AppCode exclusively for formatting. We use multiple JetBrains products and try to maintain a consistent style across all projects

[ronniebarker]

I'm trying to find a replacement to ios app development in AppCode. The most important feature is being able to work with xcode projects. Support for the old xcode project format for legacy apps - but, more importantly the new xcode format that AppCode doesn't support (hence the growing need for an alternative).

Generally:

• Language support
• Code style
• Refactorings

For me, debugging will be in xcode - so that's definitely not a priority.

We currently run the tests in xcode as well - mostly because AppCode is stuck at iOS15.2 / Xcode14.2 - but that makes it really hard to keep the cycle short and TDD almost impossible so running the

[jansorg]

Are you mostly using XCode as a replacement or have you tried an alternative like VSCode, for example?

JetBrains terminated AppCode for a reason and I need to find a way to make things work differently.

[ronniebarker]

I'm using AppCode as a replacement for XCode. I have never got on with VSCode - and as a long-ago Visual Studio user, kept away from it since Microsoft adopted it. We have always preferred JetBrains (even as far back as Resharper in Visual Studio) and spent most of our time in Rider so I am really looking for solutions to stay in JetBrains as much as possible. That helps us to have consistent styling and tooling across all of our projects.

It feels very hard to get away from Xcode when developing for ios. We find ourselves switching to xcode to build/run/debug and do the annoying apple-y plist things - but the developer experience is just terrible if you use any other tool ever for anything else. I imagine that people who only ever use xcode are fine with it...