Swift SDK for Android

Fork of the official Swift SDK for Android that includes Readdle's patches. This SDK can be used on any platform that supports the official Swift toolchain installed via swiftly.

Installation

Prebuilt SDKs are located on GitHub Releases.

1. Install Swift toolchain 6.2.1 with swiftly

swiftly install 6.2.1

2. Install Android NDK 27d

$ANDROID_HOME/cmdline-tools/latest/bin/sdkmanager --install "ndk;27.3.13750724"

3. Install Readdle Swift Android SDK

swift sdk install https://github.com/readdle/swift-android-toolchain/releases/download/6.2-r1/readdle-swift-6.2.1-RELEASE_android.artifactbundle.tar.gz --checksum 2057ecd9cf71fcd9beaded08d370f4815f867983c073f2d0010796aefdf8c2f1
export ANDROID_NDK_HOME=$ANDROID_HOME/ndk/27.3.13750724
~/Library/org.swift.swiftpm/swift-sdks/readdle-swift-6.2.1-RELEASE_android.artifactbundle/swift-android/scripts/setup-android-sdk.sh

Build and test Swift packages on Android

Swift Android Build Tools provide the swift-android command that wraps Swift Package Manager for cross-compiling and testing on Android devices.

Install Build Tools

git clone https://github.com/readdle/swift-android-buildtools.git
export PATH="$PATH:/path/to/swift-android-buildtools"

Build

swift-android build is a wrapper over swift build configured for Android. You can pass any Swift PM flags directly.

swift-android build

• Build with tests

swift-android build --build-tests

• Debug

swift-android build -Xswiftc -DDEBUG

• Release

swift-android build -c release

• Target a specific architecture

SWIFT_ANDROID_ARCH=x86_64 swift-android build

Test on device

swift-android test builds, deploys, and runs XCTest suites on a connected Android device via ADB.

swift-android test

• Run a specific test case

swift-android test -Xtest MyModuleTests.SomeTestClass/testSpecificCase

• Run on exact device

swift-android test --device DEVICE_SERIAL

• Build and push without running

swift-android test --deploy

• Just re-run tests on device

swift-android test --fast

See Swift Android Build Tools documentation for the full reference.

Build Android application in Android Studio

Swift Android Gradle plugin integrates Swift builds into your Android Studio project. It uses swiftly and the Swift Android SDK under the hood.

Setup

1. Add to your root build.gradle:

buildscript {
    repositories {
        mavenCentral()
    }
    dependencies {
        classpath 'com.readdle.android.swift:gradle:6.2'
    }
}

2. Apply the plugin in your project build.gradle:

apply plugin: 'com.readdle.android.swift'

Place your Swift package inside app/src/main/swift and build with ./gradlew assembleDebug.

Gradle	SwiftPM
./gradlew swiftClean	swift package clean
./gradlew swiftBuildDebug	swift build
./gradlew swiftBuildRelease	swift build --configuration release

See Swift Android Gradle plugin documentation for the full configuration reference.

Build Readdle SDK from source

The SDK can be built using Docker or locally on Ubuntu 24.04.

Docker build

./build-docker tag:swift-6.2.1-RELEASE ./output-dir

Local build (Ubuntu 24.04)

./build-local tag:swift-6.2.1-RELEASE ./output-dir

Both scripts accept a Swift version specifier and a working directory for the build output.

Related projects and articles

1. Swift for Android: Our Experience and Tools
2. Annotation Processor for generating JNI code
3. Cross-platform swift weather app