Breaking: valkey-swift 1.0 Released
The Swift on server community achieved a milestone today with the 1.0 release of valkey-swift, a native Swift client for the Valkey datastore (and Redis). The library is built entirely with Swift 6's structured concurrency, offering compile-time safety and automatic resource cleanup.
“Valkey-swift is a client library targeted at Valkey servers but is equally capable of working with Redis,” said Adam Fowler, open source developer and one of the library’s authors. “Every Valkey command returns typed responses checked at compile time, and strict concurrency checking is enabled throughout so that data races are caught by the compiler, not in production.”
Background
Valkey is a high-performance, open-source fork of Redis, commonly used as a caching layer or message broker in server applications. The new client replaces the de facto library RediStack, which was built on pre-concurrency Swift patterns.
“Retrofitting structured concurrency would have been awkward and some of the new features in valkey-swift infeasible,” Fowler explained. “Around the same time Redis changed its licensing structure and the open source fork Valkey was created. So it felt like a good time to make a clean break and build a new library.”
Every standard Valkey command is covered, auto-generated from Valkey’s own command specifications to stay in sync as the server evolves.
What This Means
For server-side Swift developers, valkey-swift eliminates data races at compile time and simplifies connection lifecycle with structured concurrency. The library integrates via Swift Package Manager.
Existing RediStack users can follow a migration guide to switch, and contributions are open on GitHub. Complete documentation is now available.
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Migration Guide
For those migrating from RediStack to valkey-swift, the official migration guide covers step-by-step changes. The library’s GitHub repository also welcomes contributions to improve compatibility and documentation.