[swift-evolution] [Pitch]Building a limited framework to develop Android Apps in Swift 3.0

[Tony Constantinides]

Its a nice cop-out, but this framework is an extension of the standard
library of Swift as it will allow Swift developers to target new mobile
platforms. This is the mailing lists for the evolution of Swift which is
what this is. I not sure any of the other Swift mailing lists suits this
goal. I not making Swift language changes(maybe) but adding an additional
library that developers can build against if they are interested in having
their Swift code running on Android.

Note that the Swift project itself has provided documentation and hooks to
provide this capabailit seen here
https://github.com/apple/swift/blob/master/docs/Android.md
The main issue is that swiftcore is missing on Swift for Linux.

  Its only important to understand I going to build this framework with or
without support from Swift.org. However I want other developers to benefit
from my work and I want to give back to the community. I find it extremely
disappointing if Swift core members reject enhancing Swift to target
additional mobile platforms as making Swift cross-platform is a stated goal.





On Mon, Oct 10, 2016 at 9:41 AM, Douglas Gregor <dgregor at apple.com> wrote:

>
> > On Oct 9, 2016, at 9:45 PM, Tony Constantinides via swift-evolution <
> swift-evolution at swift.org> wrote:
> >
> > In Swift 3.0 you can build Android apps in Linux but only console apps
> as there is no framework to build GUI apps using JNI.
> > What I propose is to build an initial limited framework coded in C that
> calls enough of the Java Android API via JNI to bootstrap the android app
> and to create widgets and layouts.A default Androidmanifest.xml file and
> some files needed to be generated to make a valid android app.
> >   The Android API java surface is vast, so this framework needs to be
> build over many releases to be useful. Developing a graphical Android app
> requires interaction with "Activities" and the package manager and some
> widgets like Button and some layouts like "RelativeLayout" and
> "LinearLayout".
> >  The result will be the ability to develop GUI Android apps on Linux
> using Swift 3.0
> > Further support for additional APIs will be provided once the basics are
> solid..
> > Who am I: Senior Android mobile developer with more than six years
> experience on Android.
> > Am I able to build Swift 3.0 on Linux: Yes
>
> The swift-evolution process is primarily focused on the Swift language and
> standard library. Large-scale API development, which binding to/creating a
> GUI library entails, is out-of-scope for this process and should occur in a
> different forum.
>
>         Cheers,
>         Doug
>
>
>
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