SPM support in AppCode? Promised 13 months ago...

I'm trying again to use AppCode after a fairly long Xcode-only period, and am rapidly running into issues. The primary issue I'm running into is that AppCode has (or appears to have... I can't find it if it's there) zero support for Swift Package Manager (SPM).

I have an Xcode 11.3 project with a variety of SPM-based dependencies and all is good and well inside Xcode—that is, auto-complete works, ⌘-clicking on symbols from SPM packages works and I can quickly read the package code, etc.

However, when I open the same project in AppCode, there is *zero* auto-completion for anything SPM-related. For example, even things as simple as auto-completing a module import (for a module added via SPM dependency) doesn't work, let alone any auto-complete for symbols from SPM-added code. ⌘-clicking on symbols from SPM-based modules simply says "Cannot find a declaration to go to".

This makes AppCode entirely useless to me, at this point.

I have been vocal about the very poor performance and constant indexing issues that plagued previous versions—and which, for the most part, have been improved to the point where I can actually type in AppCode without it hanging. However, when I see that CLion has had SPM support for more than a year, and JetBrains promised 13 months ago that AppCode would get the same support—see https://twitter.com/appcode/status/1088768484492959744 —I wonder if AppCode isn't a slowly dying product.

Sadly (depending on your viewpoint), I'm now back to using Xcode exclusively—I simply cannot do without autocomplete for things as basic as an imported module (whether imported via Carthage (my previous choice) or SPM).

If anyone from JetBrains cares to comment, I will appreciate it if you can lay out your plans / priorities for AppCode for 2020. I really would like AppCode to succeed... but have no other choice at this point than to abandon ship (for a time, at least).

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Official comment

Hi Stuartro,

We totally understand your frustration, but unfortunately we don't have SPM support in AppCode yet. However we are working hard on bringing SPM support to AppCode asap.

Porting SPM implementation we have in CLion Swift plugin to AppCode is not a simple task, because it requires couple of major internal infrastructure problems to be addressed and also SPM support inside Xcode project differs from standalone SPM project support we have in CLion. I can't give you exact estimate, but I'd expect SPM support in Xcode project to be delivered either as part of 2020.1 or 2020.2.

You can track feature progress in this ticket OC-19012.

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