Building for Windows environment with `swift build` or `swift test` will fail due to missing imports.

[Sencudra]

Hi,

Building for Windows environment with swift build or swift test will fail due to missing imports. The changed files are old, from a time when modern and simple APIs were not yet available. Now everything is buildable with Foundation. I thought these small changes were worth it to fix the build for Windows, so I've made a PR.

Let me know what you think

[meatball133]

Building and testing the whole repository is only for development purposes. And as we have unix-exclusive tooling, so don't these changes actually do that much for Windows support. As most of the exercises updated in that pr are deprecated so might there need to be an approach for removing them for testing as a whole.

[Sencudra]

And as we have unix-exclusive tooling, so don't these changes actually do that much for Windows support.

Yeah, I know. This is just what I ran into while trying to run some tests locally on my Windows machine. I doubt anyone would actually want to build and test in a Windows environment, even for development purposes — but since I want to continue contributing to Exercism with my windows setup, I’d rather not deal with issue again. Overall, removing platform-specific code in general improves both code quality and simplicity.

Am I missing some kind of pitfall that's preventing this from being just merged?

As most of the exercises updated in that pr are deprecated so might there need to be an approach for removing them for testing as a whole.

Looks like it could be done after adding some more logic to Package.swift targets generation to exclude deprecated exercises from even building.

P.S.
Also, are there any tasks I could contribute to? Most of the issues seem either quite old or already completed. I did notice some activity around the Swift analyzer.

[meatball133]

Yeah, I guess this pr works as a temporary solution. I have spent quite a bit of time making this track less of a "macOS" track and making it on par with Linux. For Windows, my goal is mostly that there should be compatibility for users to work through the track on an exercise basis, not to contribute.

If you want to contribute to the track in the long term, I recommend switching to WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) or using some other solution to get to work in Linux. The current tasks I think could be suitable are to add practice exercises (I have wanted more for some time, but it has had quite a low priority). To find an exercise to add, go to this page: https://exercism.org/tracks/swift/build

You will find, under practice exercises, unimplemented exercises. Find one you like and press View Data.

I have made some what of a page on how to create a practice exercise: exercism/crystal#585, it is not for Swift but Crystal, but in principle they are similar. The generator differs, so I urge reading through this doc instead: https://github.com/exercism/swift/blob/main/generator/readme.md. If the exercises have a canonical-data.json (in problems-specs repo) I want the exercise to be templated.

There is no PowerShell script on this track for configlet, but if you want to work on adding practice exercises, I can add one if you like (since configlet will make it a lot easier).

I can give some other tasks in the future but this is mostly this for now. Unless you are free to proofread read docs if you would like to do that instead.