Swift comes to FreeBSD

We have been hard at work to bring the Swift toolchain to FreeBSD. A preview Swift bundle for FreeBSD 14.3+ is available at https://download.swift.org/tmp-ci-nightly/development/freebsd-14_ci_latest.tar.gz. The bundle contains a Swift development compiler and Swift runtimes needed for compiling Swift programs on, and for, FreeBSD 14 on x86_64 machines.

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Dependencies

The Swift compiler and runtimes have a few dependencies. Please install the following dependencies:

• zlib-ng
• python3
• sqlite3
• libuuid
• curl

Known Issues

The compiler in the bundle is still under development and isn’t part of a release yet and we’re not quite done porting everything to FreeBSD.

Here is a list of known issues that you may run into while trying things out.

• Thread sanitizer reports incorrect failures
  • FreeBSD: ThreadSanitizer: main thread finished with ignores enabled · Issue #11759 · swiftlang/llvm-project · GitHub
• LLDB is unable to execute Swift expressions
  • FreeBSD: lldb expression evaluation fails · Issue #11760 · swiftlang/llvm-project · GitHub
• Command Plugins in a SwiftPM package hangs
  • FreeBSD: Command Plugin tests are hanging · Issue #9344 · swiftlang/swift-package-manager · GitHub
• Using standard types with C++ interop results in an undefined voidify symbol
  • FreeBSD: C++ Interop: Undefined `__voidify` symbol at link · Issue #85368 · swiftlang/swift · GitHub
• Importing the C libraries is done through “Glibc”. This will change to import FreeBSD
  • Add *BSD pthread API notes · Issue #81407 · swiftlang/swift · GitHub
• lld and lldb depend on libxml2.so.2, which is not be available in the system package manager.
  • FreeBSD: ld-elf.so.1: Shared object “libxml2.so.2” not found, required by “lldb” · Issue #85348 · swiftlang/swift · GitHub

We are investigating adding aarch64 support and making the bundle available for all minor versions of FreeBSD 14.

As you find more bugs, please file issues at https://github.com/swiftlang/swift/issues.

We look forward to hearing your feedback. If you’re interested in helping add the finishing polish, please feel free to reach out here on the forums.