I know this has been lately decaying.. most referenced are very old, such as this one: https://github.com/richardjrossiii/CBasediOSApp
Hence my question: Is it possible?
Is it possible to write plain C iOS app in 2025?
1–10 of 74 posts
Re: Is it possible to write plain C iOS app in 2025?
#2Give it a shot. The project you linked to, despite being old seems like it'd get you most of the way there.
Re: Is it possible to write plain C iOS app in 2025?
#3Definitely. Just find a use case where you need the performance
Re: Is it possible to write plain C iOS app in 2025?
#4Definitely. Just find a use case where you need the performance
Why do you focus on "performance" here?
Re: Is it possible to write plain C iOS app in 2025?
#5Yes, it's basically writing a nibless objective-c application but manually translating all invocations to objc_msgsend yourself. You're not going to be able to avoid the objective-c runtime though.
Re: Is it possible to write plain C iOS app in 2025?
#6I read about someone doing this in android. The C app wrote directly to the framebuffer. Absurdly small apk.
Re: Is it possible to write plain C iOS app in 2025?
#7If you just want to write C and are ok linking to stuff that is in other languages, then I used SDL2 for my game which I wrote in C and is on the app store. It was a very pleasant experience, and if I were doing an iOS thing again, I would likely do something similar.
I think I had one objective C file in there for calling a library function I needed, but otherwise I just wrote C code.
Re: Is it possible to write plain C iOS app in 2025?
#8Ha I ported my c solitaire program (uses SDL2) to iOS a couple years ago and it was pretty smooth. I didn't know or think this was unusual, but I suppose most people would not start an iOS app this way.
Re: Is it possible to write plain C iOS app in 2025?
#9If you just want to write C and are ok linking to stuff that is in other languages, then I used SDL2 for my game which I wrote in C and is on the app store. It was a very pleasant experience, and if I were doing an iOS thing again, I would likely do something similar. I think I had one objective C file in there for calling a library function I needed, but otherwise I just wrote C code.
Just SDL2? Do you have access to OpenGL or some sound library as well? and if so what library are you using? How do you handle input and networking?
Re: Is it possible to write plain C iOS app in 2025?
#10If you just want to write C and are ok linking to stuff that is in other languages, then I used SDL2 for my game which I wrote in C and is on the app store. It was a very pleasant experience, and if I were doing an iOS thing again, I would likely do something similar. I think I had one objective C file in there for calling a library function I needed, but otherwise I just wrote C code.
SDL2 is awesome. Just the right level of abstraction for me (not "all-in" like Unity, etc.).