WAwahnfrieden·Sep 17, 2025
The purpose is not iOS 13 (they perhaps should not place that in the lede). But even iOS 17 is hard to use swiftdata on, given indexes were not even added until 18. And many deploy still to iOS 17 or even 16. I don’t know why you see support for that as a suspicious negative.
But for me the draw is:
- Can use this outside SwiftUI views, unlike SwiftData
- Can adopt future improvements without waiting on annual release cycle + several more years until I can sunset older OS compatibility
- Performance: SwiftData has severe performance issues that are manageable with SQLite
- Cross-platform: SQLiteData depends on GRDB which is perhaps close to merging support for Android (and already supports Linux), at least as an experimental trait: https://github.com/groue/GRDB.swift/pull/1708 By using it with https://skip.tools I can deploy the same Swif
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tUI codebase to both iOS and Android. And with SwiftCrossUI I can target Windows, Linux too while reusing the same model/persistence layer code. Perhaps this will work in WASM too.
And lastly, many apps already choose to use SQLite. You can see several commenters here who use GRDB in their projects. This library adds CloudKit sync to that which has previously not existed outside of broken experiments or proprietary in-house solutions. The CloudKit capability is more relevant than a decision for whether to use declarative syntax.
Now that RealmSwift is dead, there are to my knowledge zero other alternatives to this new library and SwiftData/CoreData for a CloudKit-synced DB.
Re: pointfreeco I’m unfamiliar with their other work and have no interest in TCA. This library has no dependency on TCA and no lock in on the esoteric or paid parts of their ecosystem that I can see. Most of what it does is provided by GRDB, which has some level of community support and production adoption even from within Apple’s own frameworks (Apple ships GRDB inside of iOS & macOS!). Your comments there seem like fear-mongering and irrelevant to this project. I suggest evaluating this independent of any perceived baggage from their brand’s other work.