Adding dark mode to a UIKit App Nov 4 2020

First, remember create a new branch for the changes, we can do that using Xcode or the git(1) command-line tool.

Understanding SwiftNIO by building a text modifying server Aug 20 2020

Building a network application requires a good amount of effort, not only because of the complexities of the application you are building but also by the nature of network architecture. We have to define how are we going to handle the connections,...

Building a text-based application using Swift and ncurses Aug 6 2020

The ncurses(3) library powers many popular text-based applications, for example, emacs(1) and htop(1). The use of ncurses is not required to build text-based applications. We could use escape sequences. And for small command-line tools escape sequences...

How to read passwords and sensitive data from the command-line using Swift Jul 17 2020

Shoulder surfing is a real threat. And we, as software developers, should strive to provide safety to our users. One way to mitigate the inadvertent exposure of sensitive data is related to how we handle the input of sensitive data in our applications...

Understanding the Swift Argument Parser and working with STDIN Jul 7 2020

Operating systems have provided command-line interfaces for decades now, and all but the simplest command-line tools require argument parsing. Due to years of use and refinement, there are many expectations on how command-line tools should handle arguments...

Command-line argument parsing using Swift Package Manager's TSCUtility module Nov 21 2019

If you've used the Swift Package Manager, you have interacted with its handy command-line tool. When creating command-line tools, we strive to provide an easy to use interface. One of the main characteristics of a good CLI tool is how it handles parameters...

Creating a state machine in Swift Nov 13 2019

State machines are used to model systems that can be thought of as a collection of states, and a collection of events that cause state changes. Many of the systems we want to model can be abstracted to a state machine. For example, elements in a Game...

Making a C library available in Swift using the Swift Package Manager Nov 7 2019

System libraries are typically defined using C, that means we need a way to make them available to Swift. In this post, we are going to explore how to use the Swift Package Manager to give us access to C libraries, be it system or user-defined.

Let...

Multithreading with pthreads in Swift Oct 29 2019

Long gone are the days when single process single thread was the norm. We now take multithreading for granted, we expect all our applications not to lockup when we interact with them. We expect them to handle multiple users at the same time, etcetera...

Creating a Launch Agent that provides an XPC service on macOS using Swift Oct 21 2019

Last week we discussed how to build XPC Services(the .xpc bundles) inside your macOS applications. This week we are going to explore how to provide XPC services that can be used from other applications or tools.

To make the XPC service available to...

XPC Services on macOS apps using Swift Oct 17 2019

We have access to many Inter-Process-Communication(IPC) mechanisms in macOS. One of the newest is XPC¹. Before XPC a common way to use IPC, and provide services between processes, was through Sockets or Mach Messages (Using Mach Ports).

Nowadays,...

Using Kernel Queues (kqueue) notifications in Swift Oct 9 2019

Many components of macOS trace their roots back to BSD. One key aspect inherited from BSD is the Kernel Event Notification mechanism know as Kernel Queues (kqueues for short).

In the past, before kqueue(2)¹/ kevent(2)², when we wanted to track events...