alt Hacker NewsI just released Swift Stream IDE v1.17.0, which now supports full native Android app development entirely in Swift. You can build apps without touching XML, Java, or Kotlin.
Under the hood, projects are powered by SwifDroid, a framework I built that handles the Android application lifecycle, activities, fragments, and UI widgets (Android, AndroidX, Material, Flexbox) while automatically managing Gradle dependencies. The IDE compiles Swift, generates a full Android project ready for Android Studio.
This is the first public release. Both tooling and framework are open-source and MIT-licensed.
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One thing useful for Swift is it's native interop with C / C++ libraries. These are often presented as SwiftPM or Bazel dependencies. How do you handle SwiftPM dependencies?
Interestinggg. How does binding Java/Kotlin code into Swift work?
(we're trying to do something very similar with Rust instead of Swift)
Congrats, I've definitely been looking to just centralize with Swift. Great work!
The threshold question is crossover: what Android development experience is required for Swift developers, and what Swift experience is required for Android/Kotlin developers? By saying "without touching XML, Java, or Kotlin", are you implying that Swift developers without Android experience could be successful?
Then the questions is: roughly what percentage of Kotlin or Flutter apps could be writable in Swift? Today and next year?