Build and publish container images using Swift Package Manager.
Container images are the standard way to package cloud software today. Once you have packaged your server in a container image, you can deploy it on any container-based public or private cloud service, or run it locally using a desktop container runtime.
Swift Container Plugin makes it easy to build container images for servers written in Swift, using Swift Package Manager.
Find out more and see it in action:
- How to put Swift in a box at FOSDEM 2025.
- Swift to the cloud in a single step at ServerSide.Swift 2024.
Swift Container Plugin can package any executable product defined in Package.swift in a container image and publish it to a container registry.
After adding the plugin to your project, you can build and publish a container image in one step:
% swift package --swift-sdk x86_64-swift-linux-musl \
build-container-image --repository registry.example.com/myservice
...
Plugin ‘ContainerImageBuilder’ wants permission to allow all network connections on all ports.
Stated reason: “This command publishes images to container registries over the network”.
Allow this plugin to allow all network connections on all ports? (yes/no) yes
...
Building for debugging...
Build of product 'containertool' complete! (4.95s)
...
Build of product 'hello-world' complete! (5.51s)
...
[ContainerImageBuilder] Found base image manifest: sha256:7bd643386c6e65cbf52f6e2c480b7a76bce8102b562d33ad2aff7c81b7169a42
[ContainerImageBuilder] Found base image configuration: sha256:b904a448fde1f8088913d7ad5121c59645b422e6f94c13d922107f027fb7a5b4
[ContainerImageBuilder] Built application layer
[ContainerImageBuilder] Uploading application layer
[ContainerImageBuilder] Layer sha256:dafa2b0c44d2cfb0be6721f079092ddf15dc8bc537fb07fe7c3264c15cb2e8e6: already exists
[ContainerImageBuilder] Layer sha256:2565d8e736345fc7ba44f9b3900c5c20eda761eee01e01841ac7b494f9db5cf6: already exists
[ContainerImageBuilder] Layer sha256:2c179bb2e4fe6a3b8445fbeb0ce5351cf24817cb0b068c75a219b12434c54a58: already exists
registry.example.com/myservice@sha256:a3f75d0932d052dd9d448a1c9040b16f9f2c2ed9190317147dee95a218faf1df
You can deploy your service in the cloud, or use a standards-compliant container runtime such as podman to run it locally:
% podman run -p 8080:8080 registry.example.com/myservice@sha256:a3f75d0932d052dd9d448a1c9040b16f9f2c2ed9190317147dee95a218faf1df
Trying to pull registry.example.com/myservice@sha256:a3f75d0932d052dd9d448a1c9040b16f9f2c2ed9190317147dee95a218faf1df...
...
2024-05-26T22:57:50+0000 info HummingBird : [HummingbirdCore] Server started and listening on 0.0.0.0:8080
- Swift Container Plugin runs on macOS and Linux and requires Swift 6.0 or later.
- On macOS you must install a cross-compilation Swift SDK, such as the Swift Static Linux SDK, in order to build executables which can run on Linux-based cloud infrastructure.
- A container runtime is not required to build an image, but one must be available wherever the image is to be run.
Learn more about setting up your project in the ContainerImageBuilder plugin documentation.
Take a look at the Examples.