Developers Can Now Make Android Apps With Apple’s Swift

The first preview release of the Swift SDK for Android was published this week, allowing developers to build Android apps in Swift with official tooling and making it easier to share code across iOS and Android.

The SDK enables Android apps to be built in Swift using officially supported tooling rather than community workarounds. In June, it was announced that Apple’s Swift programming language would be officially extended to support Android app development through the establishment of a dedicated Android Working Group within the Swift open-source project.

Android interoperability is handled by swift-java, which can automatically generate bindings between Java and Swift so developers can use Swift code alongside existing Android APIs and Java code. The Swift Package Index now marks packages with Android support and says over 25% of all packages already build on Android, giving developers a base of reusable code.

The Swift SDK for Android is already available in nightly preview form bundled with the Swift for Windows installer or as a separate download for Linux and macOS users. A new Getting Started guide with end-to-end setup instructions and a set of example Android projects written in Swift to illustrate complete workflows is also available.

The group is preparing a vision document to set future priorities and is tracking progress on a public project board.Tags: Android, SwiftThis article, “Developers Can Now Make Android Apps With Apple’s Swift” first appeared on MacRumors.comDiscuss this article in our forumsMacRumors: Mac News and Rumors – Front PageRead More