The Official Swift SDK for Android Now in Preview
The Swift programming language has officially gone Android. The Swift Android workgroup has released its first nightly preview releases of the Swift SDK for Android, a huge advancement for developers who want to share code in the context of building cross-platform applications.
SDK's Provision for Developers
This first preview release has the implementation of basic components, which allows initiation of the Android application development process using the Swift programming language. It marks a giant achievement-scaled step toward another viable option of mobile ecosystems beyond Apple platforms from Swift. The SDK is made available through a Windows installer or a separate download for Linux and macOS users.
Getting Started with Swift on Android
In order to kick-start developing with this new technology, the workgroup has made available quite a number of important resources:
- There is a Getting Started guide to help through setting up to write native Swift code on an Android device.
- The example repository demonstrates the full application workflows that's swift for Android.
- This swift-java project is a major element in crossing the bridge it creates by generating most of the bindings, which allow seamless communication between Swift and Java code.
Effects within the Swift Ecosystem
Porting existing Swift packages to Android is now possible. According to the announcement, over 25% packages of the Swift Package Index are, so far, compatible with Android builds. Henceforth, the Community Showcase will also designate which packages are Android-enabled.
Future Plans and Involvement of the Community
This preview release is just the beginning, and the development team is aggressively seeking feedback from the community in the Swift forums to further define the future of this undertaking. A vision document is under review that will capture the priority areas of development.
Progress on big efforts are publicly tracked on a project board, providing transparency on the ongoing work to improve and stabilize Swift on Android.
