The Swift SDK for Android

Post by palata » Sun, Oct 26, 2025, 8:54 PM UTC

JimDabell wrote: post #243

palata wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The most important question for every cross platform framework is what happens to the UI? I kindly disagree. The first feature I want from a cross-platform framework is that it lets me write a native UI. That's why I like KMP: I can just share a framework with an iOS app built with SwiftUI. Sharing business logic makes a lot of sense in a ton of cases and has been done forever (C/C++/Rust/Go libraries, etc). Sharin…

> > The most important question for every cross platform framework is what happens to the UI? > I kindly disagree. The first feature I want from a cross-platform framework is that it lets me write a native UI. I don’t understand – aren’t you agreeing?

Post by ignoramous » Mon, Oct 27, 2025, 12:50 PM UTC

afro88 wrote: post #166

tomovo wrote: post #63

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If you mean Kotlin Multiplatform, it works pretty well. Not easy to debug, the GC is a bit weaker than the Android implementation and optimized builds can get crazy slow as the app grows. The interface uses auto-generated ObjC headers which are very verbose. Native Swift API is in beta. Overall still worth it for a commercial app, I think.

We use it in my team and it works well enough, but iOS is a bit second class citizen. Everything translates to Obj-C (NSObject at the root), so even something as simple as a data class becomes NSObjects with a cumbersome dev experience rather than a native swift enum. We're looking forward to native swift export to go stable - it's currently experimental / beta.

Post by wffurr » Mon, Oct 27, 2025, 3:00 PM UTC

timsneath wrote: post #111

wffurr wrote: post #105

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How does transpiration work without GC? I would think all the Kotlin equivalents would be GC heap allocated objects.

This doesn't transpile. It cross-compiles to Android architectures using the NDK. You can see a very simple "hello world" example at the bottom of this article: https://www.swift.org/documentation/articles/swift-sdk-for-a...

Post by dvtkrlbs » Thu, Oct 30, 2025, 8:56 AM UTC

wahnfrieden wrote: post #255

dvtkrlbs wrote: post #209

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I think using a closed source solution (except the platform native solution) for such a core part of an application is a big no.

I agree it makes me very nervous. Though as I understand it, it's mostly open source (edit: not the build tool tho). Their transpiler solution at least results in maintainable Kotlin code that one could begin working in directly without needing Skip. But the transpiler way is more limiting than the native Swift SDK on Android. I'm considering using it just as a way to bootstrap as my main focus has been iOS/Mac. If I…