Swift 6 released with enhanced cross-platform support, new concurrency features, and more

The Swift team has released Swift 6, a major update expanding the language's reach across more platforms and domains. This version introduces numerous low-level programming features, an embedded Swift language subset, expanded support for Linux and Windows, and new cross-platform APIs, including the Swift Testing library. Key features include an opt-in language mode for diagnosing potential data races in concurrent code, a new Synchronization library with low-level concurrency APIs, and improved error handling by allowing functions to specify error types in their signatures.

Swift 6 also enhances interoperability with C++, supporting move-only types, virtual methods, and more. It includes a preview of Embedded Swift for ARM and RISC-V environments and adds signed and unsigned 128-bit integer types. Debugging is improved with a new macro for customizing object display and better debugger startup performance. The update also brings the new Swift Testing library and various productivity enhancements, along with an updated Foundation library.