1. Install Swift via Swiftly
The Swiftly installer manages Swift and its dependencies. It supports switching between different versions and downloading updates.
curl -O https://download.swift.org/swiftly/linux/swiftly-$(uname -m).tar.gz && \
tar zxf swiftly-$(uname -m).tar.gz && \
./swiftly init --quiet-shell-followup && \
. "${SWIFTLY_HOME_DIR:-$HOME/.local/share/swiftly}/env.sh" && \
hash -rcurl -O https://download.swift.org/swiftly/linux/swiftly-(uname -m).tar.gz && \
tar zxf swiftly-(uname -m).tar.gz && \
./swiftly init --quiet-shell-followup && \
set -q SWIFTLY_HOME_DIR && source "$SWIFTLY_HOME_DIR/env.fish" || source ~/.local/share/swiftly/env.fishContainer
Official container images are available for compiling and running Swift on a variety of distributions.
2. Select an Editor
Visual Studio Code
Visual Studio Code is a cross-platform and extensible editor that supports Swift through the Swift extension, which provides intelligent editor functionality as well as debugging and test support.
Other editors
Any editor that supports the Language Server Protocol (LSP) can use SourceKit-LSP to provide intelligent editor functionality for Swift.
3. Build a Command-line Tool
Let’s write a small application with your new Swift development environment.
Create a directory:
mkdir MyCLIcd MyCLIswift package init --name MyCLI --type executableswift run MyCLISwift SDK Bundles
Additional components for cross-compilation
Development Snapshots
Swift snapshots are prebuilt binaries that are automatically created from the branch. These snapshots are not official releases. They have gone through automated unit testing, but they have not gone through the full testing that is performed for official releases.
Swiftly
Swiftly supports installing development snapshot toolchains. For example, you can install the latest available snapshot for the next major release using the “main-snapshot” selector and prepare your code for when it arrives.
swiftly install main-snapshotswiftly install 6.2-snapshotStatic Linux SDK
main
September 7, 2025
Static Linux SDK - Cross compile to Linux.
release/6.2
September 10, 2025
Static Linux SDK - Cross compile to Linux.