The Foundation framework defines a base layer of functionality that is required for almost all applications. It provides primitive classes and introduces several paradigms that define functionality not provided by either the Objective-C runtime and language or Swift standard library and language.
It is designed with these goals in mind:
- Provide a small set of basic utility classes.
- Make software development easier by introducing consistent conventions.
- Support internationalization and localization, to make software accessible to users around the world.
- Provide a level of OS independence, to enhance portability.
There is more information on the Foundation framework here.
This project, provides an implementation of the Foundation API for platforms where there is no Objective-C runtime. On macOS, iOS, and other Apple platforms, apps should use the Foundation that comes with the operating system. Our goal is for the API in this project to match the OS-provided Foundation and abstract away the exact underlying platform as much as possible.
