Swift 5: Start Your Engines
Ted Kremenek (via Erica Sadun):
ABI stability is the center focus of Swift 5 — and we will pivot much of our prioritization of efforts for Swift 5 around it. With Swift 4, ABI stability was a strong goal. In Swift 5, it is a requirement of the release. Whatever ABI we have at the end of Swift 5 is the ABI that we will have. ABI stability is an important inflection point for the maturity of the language, and it cannot be delayed any longer.
[…]
It is a non-goal of Swift 5 to roll out a full new concurrency model. That is simply too large an effort to do alongside ABI stability. However, it is important that we start making progress on discussing the directions for concurrency and laying some of the groundwork.
[…]
After reflecting on the evolution process during both the Swift 3 and Swift 4 releases, the Core Team felt that we could strike a balance with not diluting attention from ABI stability while still enabling a broader range of proposals compared to Swift 4 by requiring that all proposals have an implementation before they are officially reviewed by the Core Team. An implementation can come long after an idea has been pitched and after a proposal has been written. However, before a pull request for an evolution proposal will be accepted — and thus an official review scheduled — an implementation must be in hand for a proposal as part of the review.
Update (2017-08-10): See also: Hacker News.
