[Swift-user] A note about how Swift runs applications

[Michael Wilde]

Copying here a reply to a question to info at swift-lang.org:

On 6/7/14, 10:08 AM, a user wrote:
> I would like very much to try learning Swift, yet my question is 
> reminiscent of the old expression, "If you have to ask, then you..."! 
> Anyway, here goes: I was somewhat put off upon reading the first page 
> or two of the tutorial re getting the best experience by running it in 
> a playground!? Obviously, they are not referring to swings and 
> see-saws, but other than that one reference I cannot find an 
> explanation; what am I missing?
>
> Please excuse my ignorance. My only excuse is that I am almost 80 and 
> the only playground we learned about had sand on the ground.
Thanks for pointing out our poorly worded text. We will try to improve it.

I suspect you were (rightly) confused by the term "application sandbox". 
We used it in what's become a common computer science usage:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandbox_(software_development)

In particular, Swift runs application programs that your script 
specifies in a uniquely created temporary directory that the 
documentation refers to as a "job directory" (but which we are changing 
to call "task directory" in the 0.95 release, as part of making our 
terminology more clear and consistent).

Each application invocation gets its own job ("task") directory, into 
which Swift links the task's input files, and in which Swift expects to 
find the application's output files after it has completed.

We sometimes refer to this application job/task directory as the 
application's "sandbox" because it can run within this directory without 
affecting other concurrently running application tasks.

Please join the swift-user discussion list; that's the best place to 
send questions like this, so that many people can provide answers and 
all can benefit from them.

-- 
Michael Wilde
Mathematics and Computer Science          Computation Institute
Argonne National Laboratory               The University of Chicago


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