biome
0.3.2

swift-biome is a versioned, multi-package Swift documentation compiler.

Biome is meant to be the back-end component of a web service or a static site generator. Biome handles symbolgraph parsing, dependency resolution, cross-linking, version control, organization, presentation, HTML rendering, and URI routing.

Biome powers the swiftinit.org ecosystem documentation!

Overview

Biome is built atop many of the same components as DocC. Its primary input source is the symbolgraph format generated by lib/SymbolGraphGen. It also reads Package.resolved, and Package.catalog, which is generated by the swift-package-catalog plugin.

Since v0.3.1, Biome compiles raw symbolgraphs ahead-of-time into the ss file format, which is a more performant, compact, and compression algorithm-friendly symbolgraph representation.

Biome includes a tool, swift-symbolgraphc, which can be used to convert raw symbolgraphs into ss files.

The swift-biome-resources submodule holds precompiled ss files for recent versions of the standard library, and various sources and webpacks for its default frontend.

The ecosystem repository is not tracked by this repository, but it contains historical symbolgraphs, Package.resolved files, and Package.catalog files for select ecosystem packages.

The swift-biome package includes an executable swift-nio-based target called preview which can be used to build and browse docs locally. This server does not have security features, and is not intended to be used in production.

Consumers of swift-biome with more sophisticated use-cases are expected to implement their own web server interfacing with Biome via WebSemantics.

The frontend is written in Sass and Typescript.

Building

Building Biome requires the DEVELOPMENT-SNAPSHOT-2022-08-09-a toolchain. The toolchain requirement is exact due to the way that swift-syntax and swift-markdown link to the swift runtime.

Currently, Biome can only be built on linux. Ubuntu and Amazon Linux 2 are officially supported. The only technical limitations preventing Biome from building on macOS are a handful of file system APIs used by the PackageLoader target, and we hope to port Biome to macOS soon.

Constituents

Subpackages

1. swift-balanced-trees

   Provides a red-black forest implementation, used by Biome’s in-memory database. (Biome uses a red-black forest, and not a collection of B-trees because it versions symbols individually.)

Library products

1. URI

   Implements a URI parser and basic URI operations.

2. Versions

   Implements semantic versions.

3. SymbolGraphs

   Decodes raw symbolgraph fragments emitted by the swift compiler, performs module-local post-processing, and encodes them into symbolgraph files. Also provides type definitions for various source code constructs.

4. Biome

   Implements the documentation compiler, renderer, and in-memory database.

5. PackageResolution

   Decodes the Package.resolved file format.

6. PackageCatalogs

   Decodes the Package.catalog file format, and handles loading and discovery of symbolgraphs, DocC archives, and SPM snippets from the file system. Can also invoke SymbolGraphs to compile raw symbolgraph fragments on-the-fly.

7. PackageLoader

   Invokes PackageCatalogs and Biome, and provides convenience APIs for adding symbolgraphs from the former to the latter.

Executable products

1. Preview (preview)

   A basic, unsecured swift-nio-based server suitable for browsing Biome docs locally.

2. SymbolGraphConvert (swift-symbolgraphc)

   A command-line interface for invoking SymbolGraphs. Supports multithreading.

External dependencies

1. swift-grammar
2. swift-json
3. swift-highlight
4. swift-resource
5. swift-dom
6. apple/swift-markdown
7. apple/swift-syntax

The swiftinit.org deployment also depends on @Joannis ’s mongokitten, although swift-biome itself does not depend on it.