xtool for Linux

[NoelJacob]

Can https://github.com/xtool-org/xtool be used to drop MacOS support?

[marcprux]

In theory, yes. As discussed at https://github.com/orgs/skiptools/discussions/497, Skip does already feature some Linux support for building and testing Skip frameworks (e.g., the skip-lib CI runs against both macOS and Linux), so anything that just depends on Foundation and other built-in modules shipped as part of the Swift open-source Linux distribution can be built and tested on Linux.

But this is of limited utility because we cannot build full apps, which rely on the (non-open-source) SwiftUI framework. xtool could potentially fill this gap, which would mean you could build both the iOS and Android side of your app on Linux. There would be no iOS Simulator for testing, but you would be able to run on an iOS device.

I think it really just requires someone to dig in and try to put the pieces together. I wouldn't expect things to work immediately out of the box, but some massaging of the skipstone plugin might be all that is needed…