Anna Zharkova — Java-Swift Interop vs. Kotlin-Swift Export: The Path to Singularity
More information about the Mobius conference: https://jrg.su/ojGU3B
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Download the presentation from the website — https://jrg.su/MtdRxd
JetBrains announced the release of a full-fledged direct export from Kotlin/Native to Swift by the fall of 2025. This solution will help speed up the compilation of cross-platform libraries for iOS and also solve a number of performance and memory management issues.
This is a Kotlin solution. But did you know that solutions for using Swift on Android have long existed? These include support for the Swift standard library (stdlib), and working with code via C/C++ and JNI. In 2025, Apple released a powerful tool, SwiftJava, which will allow code conversion between languages and reuse of code from other technologies, sharing code without using KMP.
So, which solution is better, and when should you use one or the other? In this talk, I'll discuss the differences between a new tool for converting code from Java to Swift and back and direct Kotlin-Swift export. We'll discuss how these solutions can be used in practice, how and when to use them in Android and iOS apps, including via Gradle and SPM, and whether native or cross-platform development is better. We'll discuss the pros, cons, limitations, and best practices.