🏟 Arena (formerly know as SPMPlayground)

Arena is a macOS command line tool to create an Xcode project with a Swift Playground that's readily set up to use a Swift Package Manager library. You can reference both Github and local repositories. The latter is especially useful to spin up a Playground while working on a library.

Arena can also create a Playground in "Playground Book" format, which is the file format supported by "Swift Playgrounds". These playgrounds can then be synced and opened on the iOS version of "Swift Playgrounds" as well.

Here is an overview of the arena command line interface:

arena --help
OVERVIEW: Creates an Xcode project with a Playground and one or more SPM libraries imported and ready for use.

USAGE: arena [--name <name>] [--libs <libs> ...] [--platform <platform>] [--force] [--outputdir <outputdir>] [--version] [--skip-open] [--book] [<dependencies> ...]

ARGUMENTS:
  <dependencies>          Dependency url(s) and (optionally) version specification

OPTIONS:
  -n, --name <name>       Name of directory and Xcode project (default: SPM-Playground)
  -l, --libs <libs>       Names of libraries to import (inferred if not provided)
  -p, --platform <platform>
                          Platform for Playground (one of 'macos', 'ios', 'tvos') (default: macos)
  -f, --force             Overwrite existing file/directory
  -o, --outputdir <outputdir>
                          Directory where project folder should be saved (default: /Users/sas/Projects/Arena)
  -v, --version           Show version
  --skip-open             Do not open project in Xcode on completion
  --book                  Create a Swift Playgrounds compatible Playground Book bundle (experimental).
  -h, --help              Show help information.

Examples

Import Github repository

arena https://github.com/finestructure/Gala
➡️ Package: https://github.com/finestructure/Gala @ from(0.2.1)
🔧 Resolving package dependencies ...
📔 Libraries found: Gala
🔨 Building package dependencies ...
✅ Created project in folder 'Arena-Playground'

Using Github shorthand syntax

You can skip the protocol and domain when refereing Github projects:

arena finestructure/Gala
➡️ Package: https://github.com/finestructure/Gala @ from(0.2.1)
🔧 Resolving package dependencies ...
📔 Libraries found: Gala
🔨 Building package dependencies ...
✅ Created project in folder 'Arena-Playground'

Import local repository

arena ~/Projects/Parser
➡️ Package: file:///Users/sas/Projects/Parser @ path
🔧 Resolving package dependencies ...
📔 Libraries found: Parser
🔨 Building package dependencies ...
✅ Created project in folder 'Arena-Playground'

Import both

arena ~/Projects/Parser finestructure/Gala
➡️ Package: file:///Users/sas/Projects/Parser @ path
➡️ Package: https://github.com/finestructure/Gala @ from(0.2.1)
🔧 Resolving package dependencies ...
📔 Libraries found: Parser, Gala
🔨 Building package dependencies ...
✅ Created project in folder 'Arena-Playground'

Specifying versions

In case you want to fetch a particular revision, range of revisions, or branch, you can use a syntax similar to the one used in a Package.swift file. Here's what's supported and the corresponding package dependecy that it will create in the generated project:

• https://github.com/finestructure/[email protected]

  → .package(url: "https://github.com/finestructure/Gala", .exact("0.1.0"))

• https://github.com/finestructure/Gala@from:0.1.0

  → .package(url: "https://github.com/finestructure/Gala", from: "0.1.0")

• "https://github.com/finestructure/[email protected]..<4.0.0"

  → .package(url: "https://github.com/finestructure/Gala", "0.1.0"..<"4.0.0")

• https://github.com/finestructure/[email protected]

  → .package(url: "https://github.com/finestructure/Gala", "0.1.0"..<"4.0.1")

• https://github.com/finestructure/Gala@branch:master

  → .package(url: "https://github.com/finestructure/Gala", .branch("master"))

• https://github.com/finestructure/Gala@revision:7235531e92e71176dc31e77d6ff2b128a2602110

  → .package(url: "https://github.com/finestructure/Gala", .revision("7235531e92e71176dc31e77d6ff2b128a2602110"))

Make sure to properly quote the URL if you are using the ..< range operator. Otherwise your shell will interpret the < character as input redirection.

How to install Arena

Homebrew

You can install Arena with Homebrew:

brew install finestructure/tap/arena

Mint

You can install Arena with Mint:

mint install finestructure/arena

Make

Last not least, you can build and install arena via the included Makefile by running:

make install

This will copy the binary arena to /usr/local/bin.

Why Arena?

Arena – Spanish for "sand" – is where you battle-test your SPM packages and sand is, well, abundant in playgrounds, isn't it? 🙂

Compatibility

arena was built and tested on macOS 10.15 Catalina using Swift 5.1.3. It should work on other versions of macOS and Swift as well.

Playground books created by arena should equally run on macOS 10.15 Catalina as well as iOS 13. Please bear in mind that the Swift packages you import when creating playground books will need to be iOS compatible.