14 DAY TRIAL // Registrants to the iOS Developer Program have new toys to download and play with. A new Xcode branch has been announced packing Swift 1.2 and support for iOS 8.3.
Xcode 6.3 beta is adjacent to Xcode 6.2 beta and Xcode 6.1.1 (stable). It doesn’t replace other Xcode builds, and is made available to assist iOS 8.3 development with a separate SDK (software development kit) and to deliver support for Swift 1.2. Using the toolset requires OS X Yosemite.
High on the list of new features in the new toolset is Swift 1.2, the latest version of Apple’s hallmark programming language based on Objective-C.
Swift 1.2 includes a number of noteworthy changes detailed in the New in Xcode 6.3 beta section on the iOS Dev Center. Xcode 6.3 also includes a migrator for moving old code to Swift 1.2, as well as some enhancements that ease interoperability between Swift and Objective-C.
People familiar with the seed notes say that there are numerous Swift language enhancements to be found in the new beta, many changes and fixes, debugger enhancements, Apple LLVM Compiler version 6.1, ARM64 intrinsic changes, addressed issues with Xcode Interface Builder, but also plenty of known issues in need of fixing in areas like Xcode Interface Builder, Migration Assistant, Xcode Templates, WatchKit Projects, Debugger, and Simulator.