Scripts to clone, configure, patch and build Swift 5.0 on Linux ARM devices.
- Supported Architectures
- Prebuilt binaries
- Building on ARM
- REPL Issues
- Acknowledgments
- Previous Releases
- ✅ ARMv6 32bit: Original RaspberryPi, Pi Zero, etc...
- ✅ ARMv7/8 32bit: All versions of RaspberryPi 2/3, OrangePi, ODroid, CHIP, etc...
- ✅ aarch64: RaspberryPis or other ARMv8 boards with a 64 bit OS, Pine64, etc...
| OS | Architecture | Boards | Download |
|---|---|---|---|
| Raspbian Stretch | ARMv6 | RaspberryPi Classic, All versions of Pi Zero | 4.2.3 |
| Raspbian Stretch | ARMv7 | All versions of RaspberryPi 2/3 | 4.2.3 |
| Ubuntu 16.04 | ARMv7 | All versions of RaspberryPi 2/3 | 4.2.3 |
| Ubuntu 18.04 | ARMv7 | All versions of RaspberryPi 2/3 | 4.2.3 |
| Ubuntu 18.10 | ARMv7 | All versions of RaspberryPi 2/3 | 4.2.3 |
| Ubuntu 18.04/aarch64 | aarch64 | All versions of RaspberryPi 2/3 | 4.2.3 |
To use the provided prebuilt binaries you'll need the install the following dependencies:
sudo apt install clang-3.8 libicu-dev libcurl4-nss-dev
On Ubuntus newer than 16.04, simply install the unversioned clang instead of clang-3.8.
Once you are done, just decompress the archive with tar xzf <archivename.tgz> as you would do with the official releases, you'll find the Swift binaries in bin/.
For the latest updates on Swift on ARM, check out my blog here.
Check out Helge Heß's project dockSwiftOnARM to build Swift in a Docker container or to build a cross-compiling toolchain that will allow you to build arm binaries directly from your Mac using a precompiled swiftc for ARM.
The scripts that buildSwiftOnARM provides:
-
clone.sh - Install dependencies and clones the main Swift repository and all the related projects
-
checkoutRelease.sh - Resets all repos, updates them, checks out a specific tag (5.0 at the moment) and apply the patches.
-
build.sh - Builds Swift producing a tgz archive with the Swift distributions.
-
clean.sh - Cleans all build artifacts, only needed when you want to start again from scratch.
First of all, use a suitably sized sd-card, at least 32Gb in size, but I recommend to use an external USB drive to clone the project and build Swift.
Configure a swap file of at least 2Gb, on Ubuntu:
sudo fallocate -l 2G swapfile
sudo chmod 600 swapfile
sudo mkswap swapfile
sudo swapon swapfile
You'll need to manually enable the swap file with swapon each time you reboot the RaspberryPi (or the system will just run without swap).
On Raspbian, since the swapfile is already configured, open /etc/dphys-swapfile and edit CONF_SWAPSIZE to increase the size:
CONF_SWAPSIZE=2048
Save the file and:
sudo /etc/init.d/dphys-swapfile stop
sudo /etc/init.d/dphys-swapfile start
Now, call the included scripts as follows:
-
Launch
clone.shthat will install the required dependencies (git cmake ninja-build clang-3.8 python uuid-dev libicu-dev icu-devtools libbsd-dev libedit-dev libxml2-dev libsqlite3-dev swig libpython-dev libncurses5-dev pkg-config libblocksruntime-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev autoconf libtool systemtap-sdt-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev libz-dev), fix clang links and clone apple/swift with all its dependecies. -
Run
checkoutRelease.shthat will select the current release (5.0) and apply the needed patches. These patches cover the basic Raspi2/3 with Xenial case, but I've had many reports of successful build on different setups, but beware, additional patches could be needed on different boards/OSs. -
Once done, start the build with
build.sh. -
Once the build completes a few hours later, you'll have a
swift-5.0.tgzarchive containing the whole Swift compiler distribution. Once decompressed you'll find the Swift binaries underusr/bin.
I recommend to perform all these operations in a permanent background tmux or screen session (CTRL+B d to detach from the session and tmux a to reattach to it when you ssh again into the RaspberryPi).
Additional steps could be required in some cases (on a RaspberryPi 1 or for Raspbian) check the latest ARM posts on my blog for additional info.
To build a different release than the one currently configured in the script, open checkoutRelease.sh and build.sh and modify the variables on top, with the branch name for the release and the release name for the tgz respectively.
Since the first releases of Swift on ARM32, the REPL has never been available on this platform, but that doesn't impact the compiler itself. Considering this, as you would expect, launching swift without parameters will result in an error instead of the REPL prompt.
We wouldn't have Swift on ARM and most of the patches included on buildSwiftOnARM without the work done by these developers:
The community can be reached at the swift-arm Slack channel.
You can compile old releases checking out the specific tag: