> If they forked it and abandoned the old project file and went with a swift first approach, could work.

Ever attempted this before at a large company and had success with it? I think I can count four times so far in ~15 years where people attempted to rewrite something medium/large-scale from scratch around me, was a success once, although scope was drastically cut at the end so almost a stretch to call it a success.

You are of course correct. It's not likely to succeed. "Could work" doesn't mean high chance of success. I was trying to imply the opposite. It's just that Xcode has so much baggage that the previous attempts have been very compromised.

In this particular case they just need to release a tool that properly generates compile_commands.json and .clangd from a .xcodeproj.

Boom! emacs is the IDE now. Bonuses all around.