Swift Ported to Android (opens in new tab)

I love Kotlin, but being able to develop libraries in one language and use them in both Android and iOS is huge. I have been using J2Objc for this until now, and while it's a great tool, it forces me to use Java, which I don't love. I would prefer being able to use Kotlin on iOS, but using Swift for Android development is a great boon.

Two points for using Swift on Android: 1) shared code between your ios, mac, and android apps. 2) you already know swift.

That said, there is always a cost to using a non-standard language to develop for a platform. Things like having to translate documentation as you read it, friction between system libraries and your languages standard library, etc.

I've not looked at Kotlin in detail, but I wonder how much that friction is reduced because it's java-based, or if you'll experience just as much friction using Swift on Android as you would using Kotlin on Android. Worth evaluating if you're starting a project 6 months to a year from now as the Swift tooling for Android starts to mature.

As it stands now, I would have a look at Kotlin, but almost definitely write any projects started today in Java. Swift is nowhere near ready, and the advantage of writing in the platform's "native" language usually outweighs any benefits there are to using a "better" language.

Some people like to avoid Java and languages dependent on JVM. For them any non JVM based solution on android is welcome change. So efforts towards that need no justification as to why any of numerous JVM language is not used first.

Guess what. No one cares if you don't use Swift. Go with Kotlin. It's probably a great choice for you. It seems like a great language and I hope it gains traction.

You're doing that nerd thing where you need to tell the world why something isn't good for you. We'd waste a lot less time if we simply found the group we desired and added value there rather than find another group and tell them why what they're doing doesn't work for you.

The main problem with Swift on Android is that AFAIK it is going to be limited to NDK.

There is certainly a niche where it can be useful, but for most developers, it makes it a no go.

Kotlin on the other end is indeed a very good stand-in replacement for java on Android.

Swift is compiled. One can expect better performance.

The target is probably iOS developers.

Can you use Xcode for Kotlin? Serious question.

I do not understand people's fascination with SWIFT. It is a great language compared to the atrocity of Objective-C but then no where close to Java.

I think there are lot of iOS programmers in the wild for whom SWIFT is first language and hence the fascination.

People focus far too much on different languages. The fact that Android and iOS have very different UI libraries is usually a much bigger problem.

Xamarin's big selling point is a cross platform ui library.

I would say that React Native is the biggest threat there.

Swift isn't a significant improvement over C#. Also, keep in mind that C# benefits from the whole Microsoft ecosystem, which includes Visual Studio.

Beyond the language, what's even more important is the application model. That's where frameworks like React Native have the edge. This might change if Microsoft upgrades Xamarin.Forms into full-blown Universal Windows App support (think WPF on iOS and Android).

I would expect this just to be basic Swift support including -perhaps- the Foundation library (String, Array and other "low level" functionality). I don't think this Swift port has currently any easy way to create apps with a graphical user interface using some sort of Java bridge. So compared to Xamarin, using Swift for Android apps would be pretty limited.

But please correct me if I'm wrong.

C# devs like myself are interested in Xamarin are interested because they don't have too learn new language / tooling to do mobile dev. Learning Swift isn't any more appealing than learning Objective C.

Why? Microsoft will likely offer Swift support in the UWA platform soon, they already support Objective C. I suspect they will announce Swift is now supported under project Islandwood at Build.

Far from likely. For those fed up with Java, Android has Kotlin already.

It would be great if Swift could target .Net Core.

Just my thought.

F# is already spoiling Swift's feathers. And F# has first class support in Xamarin.

If you look at the changes, you'll see most things are pretty simple:

* CMake files are expanded to handle an Android target.

* Code that checks for specific defines or values like __FREEBSD__ || __LINUX__ now have an added condition to also check for __ANDROID__.

* Some tooling scripts to integrate adb into the Swift SDK.

* Some minor fixes elsewhere.

So, special support is a really minimal set of changes that any platform would need.

Android uses Bionic libc which has its quirks. The Android kernel also has several patches that were at one time quite controversial, though many have moved upstream to the mainline.

No, for example UNIX IPC isn't available.

Google has ripped most of the stuff they see as fluff for Android.

Edit: Any C and C++ API not listed as stable and public on the NDK docs is not guaranteed to exist in all devices.

Swift doesn't have the slightest concept of UI. If you want to do UI work in Swift, you use whatever UI frameworks are available on your target platform. Since Swift interoperates very nicely with C and Objective-C, those frameworks can be written in those languages and still be usable from Swift. On OS X the framework happens to be Cocoa, but Swift isn't in any way tied to it.

On Android, Swift will likely be in the same position as the NDK, which isn't a great place to be for UI, but it's doable. You'll be able to make the same UI calls you'd make from C code.

Apple doesn't use swift because they already have stable versions of their Apps written in Objective C and there's no reason to rewrite everything in swift because they can mix ObjC and Swift.

On that note, MS doesn't use C# that much outside of websites. Maybe people should take the hint there as well.

What?