StackView Strangeness in Swift

Question

I'm trying to make a little close simplification, and I seem to have missed something basic. I want the following snippet:

        let updateStackView = NSStackView(views: [updateField])
        updateStackView.orientation = .horizontal
        updateStackView.distribution = .fill
        updateStackView.alignment = .centerX

to look more like this:

let updateStackView = stack(views[updateField], orient: .horizontal, dist: .fill, align: .centerX)

    func stack(views:[NSView],
               orient: NSUserInterfaceLayoutOrientation,
               dist: NSStackView.Distribution,
               align: NSLayoutConstraint.Attribute) -> NSStackView {
        let s = NSStackView(views: views)
        s.orientation = orient
        s.distribution = dist
        s.alignment = align
        return s
    }

But, the returned StackView does not get the attributes assigned. What am I missing?

The original snippet works as expected. The factored code doesn't.