[Bug]: swift-tools-version in SPM apps still hardcoded to 5.9 for Cordova plugins

[sizeak]

Capacitor Version

Support for setting this in Capacitor plugins was added here but this doesn't extend to Cordova plugins.

Other API Details

Platforms Affected

• iOS
• Android
• Web

Current Behavior

swift-tools-version: 5.9 hardcoded in

capacitor/cli/src/ios/update.ts

Line 259 in de1e506

const content = `// swift-tools-version: 5.9

Expected Behavior

Should take value of

{
	// other configs...
	"experimental": {
		"ios": {
			"spm": {
				"swiftToolsVersion": "6.1"
			}
		}
	}
}

from capacitor.config.json

Project Reproduction

https://github.com/ionic-team/capacitor

Additional Information

No response

[jcesarmobile]

And what would be the purpose of doing this in the generated Package.swift for Cordova plugins?

It's allowed to have different versions per package, almost all Capacitor plugins will still have 5.9 and that doesn't cause issues. If swiftToolsVersion is set, we don't change the versions for every plugin, just in the CapApp-SPM, which is the one where plugins get linked.

This is for the generated Package.swift, it's generated when there isn't one, if your Cordova plugin needs 6.x for some reason, you'll most likely need to add the Package.swift in the plugin instead of relying in the generated one, if there is one, Capacitor won't generate a "dummy" one. But have in mind that cordova-ios uses 5.9 and can't be changed, so if you add a Package.swift using 6.x because you need some 6.x feature, it might not work in Cordova projects.

[Ionitron]

It looks like this issue didn't get the information it needed, so I'll close it for now. If I made a mistake, sorry! I am just a bot.

Have a great day!
Ionitron 💙

[sizeak]

Hi @jcesarmobile, this might be caused by a lack of understanding on my part then, but the behaviour I encountered didn't match that. I needed to update our apps minimum supported iOS version to 18.4 which caused the build to fail due to capacitor plugins not supporting swift-tools-version > 5.9.

Using the experiment config option fixed this for capacitor apps, but then another team member added a cordova plugin which broke the build again like so

$ xcodebuild -resolvePackageDependencies -scheme App -project App.xcodeproj -configuration Release

Command line invocation:
    /Applications/Xcode_26.2.app/Contents/Developer/usr/bin/xcodebuild -resolvePackageDependencies -scheme App -project App.xcodeproj -configuration Release

Resolve Package Graph

Package: unknown
xcodebuild[2135:12658] Writing error result bundle to /var/folders/.../ResultBundle.xcresult
xcodebuild: error: Could not resolve package dependencies:
  'v18' is unavailable
  /path/to/ios/App/CapApp-SPM/Package.swift:7:23: error: 'v18' is unavailable
 5 | let package = Package(
 6 |     name: "CapApp-SPM",
 7 |     platforms: [.iOS(.v18)],
   |                       `- error: 'v18' is unavailable
 8 |     products: [
 9 |         .library(
PackageDescription.SupportedPlatform.IOSVersion.v18:4:23: note: 'v18' was introduced in PackageDescription 6.0
2 |   struct IOSVersion {
3 | @available(_PackageDescription 6.0)
4 |     public static let v18: PackageDescription.SupportedPlatform.IOSVersion  }
  |                       `- note: 'v18' was introduced in PackageDescription 6.0
5 | }

until I patched update.js with pnpm like this

diff --git a/dist/ios/update.js b/dist/ios/update.js
--- a/dist/ios/update.js
+++ b/dist/ios/update.js
@@ -213,7 +213,8 @@
             ]`
         : '';
     const { packageText, productText } = await buildDependencyTexts(p, config);
-    const content = `// swift-tools-version: 5.9
+    const swiftToolsVersion = config.app.extConfig.experimental?.ios?.spm?.swiftToolsVersion ?? '5.9';
+    const content = `// swift-tools-version: ${swiftToolsVersion}

 import PackageDescription

If this isn't a bug / not a bug for here, could you direct me to where I should raise this or what I'm doing wrong that is causing it? Thanks!

[sizeak]

@jcesarmobile I'd forgotten about this issue too sorry, maybe the bot could warn before closing?

[ionitron-bot]

Thanks for the issue! This issue is being locked to prevent comments that are not relevant to the original issue. If this is still an issue with the latest version of Capacitor, please create a new issue and ensure the template is fully filled out.