CI/CD for a Native Swift Package with GitHub Actions

Build, test, and lint your Swift package across platforms on each push.

A Swift Package Manager library is consumed by other Swift projects and must build cleanly across Apple platforms. This recipe resolves deps, builds, runs swift test, and lints with SwiftLint.

What the pipeline does

check out on a macOS runner
resolve deps with swift package resolve
build with swift build
test with swift test
lint with SwiftLint and tag a release

The workflow

swift build and swift test run on a macOS runner with the bundled toolchain; SwiftLint enforces style. Tagging a semantic version is the release mechanism for SPM consumers.

.github/workflows/ci.yml

name: CI
on:
  push:
    branches: [main]
  pull_request:
jobs:
  test:
    runs-on: macos-14
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - run: swift --version
      - run: swift package resolve
      - run: swift build -v
      - run: swift test -v
      - run: brew install swiftlint && swiftlint --strict
      - uses: actions/upload-artifact@v4
        with:
          name: build-log
          path: .build/debug.yaml

Caching and speed

Cache the .build directory with actions/cache keyed on Package.resolved to skip rebuilding unchanged dependencies. macOS runners are the priciest tier on GitHub-hosted; running on cheaper managed runners such as Latchkey (around 69% cheaper) makes frequent Apple-platform builds affordable, and auto-retry shrugs off transient toolchain or SPM fetch failures.

Releasing

SPM has no central registry by default -- consumers pull by Git tag. Push a semantic version tag (for example 1.2.0) to release; downstream Package.swift entries resolve to it. Optionally publish to the Swift Package Index by adding the repo.

Key takeaways

Swift packages build and test on a macOS runner.
Releases are Git tags -- there is no default central registry.
Cache .build on Package.resolved to skip dependency rebuilds.