Announcing the Android Workgroup(forums.swift.org)

30 pointsby desertmonada day ago4 comments

dfabulich16 hours ago
You can use Swift on Android today with Skip Tools. https://skip.tools/ The Skip devs are founding members of the Swift on Android working group.
When using Skip Fuse, your Swift code compiles to 100% native Android ARM code.
They've also reimplemented ~60% of SwiftUI on Android, in an open-source library, SkipUI. https://github.com/skiptools/skip-ui SkipUI works way better than you'd think, and anyway, it's totally optional.
You can just write Swift against native Android APIs and it works fine.
- bentocorp11 hours ago
  If Apple was really serious about combating the use of Electron and other cross-platform frameworks they would seriously support (and possibly even fund) a tool like this.
  Despite the issues, if Swift and SwiftUI were available and compelling for Android then it may help to give Apple greater mindshare of developers.
  - akmarinov6 hours ago
    If Apple cared, they would’ve just included “no cross-platform apps” in their Appstore ToS and they’d be dead the next day.
    That’s how Apple fights problems these days - gatekeeping and regulation.
    They don’t care though, cross platform apps bring money the same way as any app
zerr21 hours ago
Did they finish porting the core lib to Windows?
- CharlesW21 hours ago
  Foundation (the Swift Standard Library), Dispatch (the concurrency library), and XCTest (the testing framework) are all available and functional on Windows.
  - zerr15 hours ago
    I remember some crucial parts were not implemented a few months ago.
4b11b421 hours ago
Does this help LiveView Native efforts?
(naive question)
bestouff20 hours ago
I always found non-native apps too out-of-place. Please use Swift on iOS and Kotlin on Android.
- mattl18 hours ago
  Swift is just a programming language, I thought?
  - v5v318 hours ago
    Yes.
    Unless I am also mistaken, they are seeking to make a supported language to android development.
    Which will save mobile devs having to learn two languages, and also allow reuse of code.
    mhast17 hours ago
    Kotlin multiplatform has been around for some time if you want that. But I guess it makes sense to be able to approach it from the other end as well if you're mainly an iOS shop.
    v5v315 hours ago
    It's the only approach that can be taken, as Android being open source can make Swift a first class supported language. Apple will be apple.
    mattl18 hours ago
    Yeah Swift isn’t SwiftUI.