How specify a version for SPM for existing Objective-C git work - objective-c

Question

I'm trying to understand the Swift Package Manager manifest - Package.swift when wrapping an existing work, with regards to a version. As an example, XMLDictioonary, is my fork where I wanted to expose it to SPM; so far I have:
// swift-tools-version:5.1
// The swift-tools-version declares the minimum version of Swift required to build this package.
import PackageDescription
let package = Package(
name: "XMLDictionary",
platforms: [
.macOS(.v10_13), .iOS(.v11), .tvOS(.v11),
],
products: [
// Products define the executables and libraries produced by a package, and make them visible to other packages.
.library(name: "XMLDictionary", targets: ["XMLDictionary"]),
],
dependencies: [
// Dependencies declare other packages that this package depends on.
],
targets: [
// Targets are the basic building blocks of a package. A target can define a module or a test suite.
// Targets can depend on other targets in this package, and on products in packages which this package depends on.
.target(name: "XMLDictionary", dependencies: [],
path: "XMLDictionary",
publicHeadersPath: "."),
]
)
which Xcode (12) supports so long as my version rule specifies master, but I'd like it to be 1.4.1 as is the upstream. I might at some point in the future diverge.
But adding what I think it should be
dependencies: [
// Dependencies declare other packages that this package depends on.
.package(
url: "https://github.com/slashlos/XMLDictionary.git",
from: "1.4.1"
)
fails fails in Xcode SPM addition
and before that, locally the build fails:
error: cyclic dependency declaration found: XMLDictionary -> XMLDictionary
which I believe is telling me the dependency rule is on itself?
So how does one specify the version dependency ?

Answer 1

The Package.swift is the manifest of your framework and it has to be placed in the root directory. You did everything correctly.
If you want to import your framework in your app you should specify the Github repo url where to import the framework and eventually the version number. That version number is taken by the tags you have in your Github repo. If you set 1.4.1, SPM will checkout the code on your repository at the time it was tagged as 1.4.1 (the tag correspond to a specific commit!). BUT at that time the Package.swift wasn't there because you added it some commits later.
If you want use the semantic version to import your framework you should create a tag on your last commit. So when SPM will download that tag it's able to find your Package.swift file in there.