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mattt merged 4 commits into from
Apr 15, 2025
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Update README with information about transports and platform availability #76

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Update README with information about transports and platform availabi…
mattt Apr 15, 2025
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Add footnote about WIP Alpine Linux and Windows support
mattt Apr 15, 2025
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Move discussion of platform availability to separate section
mattt Apr 15, 2025
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Add link from requirements to platform availability section
mattt Apr 15, 2025
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64 changes: 41 additions & 23 deletions README.md
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Expand Up @@ -6,28 +6,8 @@ Swift implementation of the [Model Context Protocol][mcp] (MCP).

- Swift 6.0+ (Xcode 16+)

## Platform Support

| Platform | Minimum Version |
|----------|----------------|
| macOS | 13.0+ |
| iOS / Mac Catalyst | 16.0+ |
| watchOS | 9.0+ |
| tvOS | 16.0+ |
| visionOS | 1.0+ |
| Linux | ✓ |
| Windows | ✓ |

> [!IMPORTANT]
> MCP's transport layer handles communication between clients and servers.
> The Swift SDK supports multiple transport mechanisms,
> with different platform availability:
>
> * `StdioTransport` is available on Apple platforms
> and Linux distributions with glibc, such as
> Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, CentOS, or RHEL.
>
> * `NetworkTransport` is available only on Apple platforms.
See the [Platform Availability](#platform-availability) section below
for more information about platform requirements.

## Installation

Expand Down Expand Up @@ -154,6 +134,44 @@ let (description, messages) = try await client.getPrompt(
)
```

## Platform Availability

The Swift SDK has the following Apple platform requirements:

| Platform | Minimum Version |
|----------|----------------|
| macOS | 13.0+ |
| iOS / Mac Catalyst | 16.0+ |
| watchOS | 9.0+ |
| tvOS | 16.0+ |
| visionOS | 1.0+ |

While the core library works on any platform supporting Swift 6
(including Linux and Windows),
running a client or server requires a compatible transport.

MCP's transport layer handles communication between clients and servers.
The Swift SDK provides multiple built-in transports:

- [`StdioTransport`](/Sources/MCP/Base/Transports/StdioTransport.swift):
Implements [stdio](https://modelcontextprotocol.io/specification/2025-03-26/basic/transports#stdio) transport.
Available on Apple platforms
and Linux distributions with glibc (Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, CentOS, RHEL).
- [`HTTPClientTransport`](/Sources/MCP/Base/Transports/HTTPClientTransport.swift):
Implements [Streamable HTTP transport](https://modelcontextprotocol.io/specification/2025-03-26/basic/transports#streamable-http)
using Foundation [URL Loading System](https://developer.apple.com/documentation/foundation/url-loading-system)
- [`NetworkTransport`](/Sources/MCP/Base/Transports/NetworkTransport.swift):
Implements custom transport over TCP and UDP
using Apple's [Networking framework](https://developer.apple.com/documentation/network).
Available exclusively on Apple platforms.

You can implement a custom transport for platforms without built-in support. [^1]

For custom transport implementation details,
see the [`Transport` protocol](/Sources/MCP/Base/Transport.swift).

[^1]: We're working to add stdio transport support for [Alpine Linux](https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/swift-sdk/pull/64) and [Windows](https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/swift-sdk/pull/64). If you're interested in either of those platforms, please take a look at their respective PRs and leave a comment!

## Changelog

This project follows [Semantic Versioning](https://semver.org/).
Expand All @@ -166,4 +184,4 @@ see the [GitHub Releases page](https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/swift-sdk

This project is licensed under the MIT License.

[mcp]: https://modelcontextprotocol.io
[mcp]: https://modelcontextprotocol.io