Warning and error diagnostic directives

Paul Hudson      @twostraws

SE-0196 introduced new compiler directives that help us mark issues in our code. These will be familiar to any developers who had used Objective-C previously, but as of Swift 4.2 we can enjoy them in Swift too.

The two new directives are #warning and #error: the former will force Xcode to issue a warning when building your code, and the latter will issue a compile error so your code won’t build at all. Both of these are useful for different reasons:

• #warning is mainly useful as a reminder to yourself or others that some work is incomplete. Xcode templates often use #warning to mark method stubs that you should replace with your own code.
• #error is mainly useful if you ship a library that requires other developers to provide some data. For example, an authentication key for a web API – you want users to include their own key, so using #error will force them to change that code before continuing.

Both of these work in the same way: #warning("Some message") and #error("Some message"). For example:

func encrypt(_ string: String, with password: String) -> String {
    #warning("This is terrible method of encryption")
    return password + String(string.reversed()) + password
}

struct Configuration {
    var apiKey: String {
        #error("Please enter your API key below then delete this line.")
        return "Enter your key here"
    }
}    

Both #warning and #error work alongside the existing #if compiler directive, and will only be triggered if the condition being evaluated is true. For example:

#if os(macOS)
#error("MyLibrary is not supported on macOS.")
#endif

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Other changes in Swift 4.2…

• Derived collections of enum cases
• Dynamic member look up
• Enhanced conditional conformances
• Random number generation and shuffling
• Simpler, more secure hashing
• Checking sequence elements match a condition
• In-place collection element removal
• Boolean toggling

Download all Swift 4.2 changes as a playground Link to Swift 4.2 changes

Browse changes in all Swift versions