Apple has released its Swift 5 programming language, with a stable application binary interface (ABI) and binary compatibility that Apple says will result in the development of smaller applications. Interoperability with other languages is improved as well.

With this upgrade, the ABI is now stable on Apple platforms, so Swift libraries are now incorporated into every future release of MacOS, iOS,  WatchOS, and TVOS. Because developers will no longer have to include these libraries, applications will now be smaller and easier to build.

Other new features in Swift 5 include:

You can download Swift binaries for Linux from Swift.org. It also is available as part of the Apple Xcode 10.2 IDE, which is available from from the Apple Mac App Store.

This story, "What’s new in Apple’s Swift 5 language" was originally published by InfoWorld.