> There have been two major Xcode releases since Swift was announced, 6 and 7.

That's overstating things, I think. Xcode 6 was the first version of Xcode with Swift in.

> Totally agreed on an official plugin system. There are a bunch of interesting unofficial ones out there, but I hesitate to even try them if I can't count on them to keep working.

I try and give up occasionally. It tends to make Xcode even more unstable than normal. I'm always wondering if Apple have a replacement they are working on. It doesn't seem like it's built in such a way that it can grow in a stable manner.

I forgot that Apple leaked the news to the entire Xcode team a year early and the team sat down and planned the Swift feature set for Xcode 6 </sarcasm>

Mike Ash, you should know better.

I'm not making a statement about what features should or should not be there, I'm just counting....

You are counting incorrectly. Xcode 6 and Swift were introduced at the same time. The point is that you can't count 6 because its feature set was already finalized once Swift was announced.

Anyway, I'm sure you understand Apple's process.