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

18 points by p5v ↗ HN
It's one thing having to download this monstrosity, and a whole other, having to use it daily to write code.

12 comments

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brudgers
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
I'm using flutter and had to download xcode to build the app so I guess it's a necessary step.
skyberrys
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.
indemnity
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 :)

mimiclone
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
I feel like most Xcode free-swift setups still secretly depends on xcodebuild for anything real.
trymamboapp
tauri 2 + rust + webview give you a native feeling if you don't need any Apple frameworks