Is jetpack and jetpackCompose a different thing?

# android

[Nikhil]

Is jetpack and jetpackCompose a different thing?

[coroutinedispatcher]

Yes. Android Jetpack is just a bunch of the new libraries and API's you might have been hearing for these last years, like Paging Library, DataStore, or even LiveData and `ViewModel`s. JetpackCompose is the new UI toolkit to build Android UI, let's make this short: with kotlin and not with XML.
Normally, it's just compose, but since Compose is part of JetPack, it's called Jetpack Compose.

[coroutinedispatcher]

You may also refer to the PagingLibrary as Jetpack Paging library and nobody would be surprised 🙈

[Nikhil]

Correct me if I am wrong, flutter is the alternative to jetpack compose, right?

[coroutinedispatcher]

Not yet. With compose you can do native Android at the moment. As far as I know Kotlin Multi Platform is working with Compose to make it run just like flutter runs. However, there is still work to do. Compose is still not mature. Momentarily, for android is in alpha state

[Nikhil]

Okay! Thanks for the info @coroutinedispatcher

[Baldomero Napoli]

i know that jetpack compose is in alpha state. Do you recommend it to use it in a productive app? Or do you recommend waiting for the official state to come out?

[allan.conda]

#compose

[Baldomero Napoli]

is it a resounding no? :(

[stephanmg]

correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t alpha state pretty much self-explanatory?

[stephanmg]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_release_life_cycle#Alpha

[coroutinedispatcher]

It's very debatable though. Compose it's an API on top of which you have to work with. It's not the software you expose to the user

[stephanmg]

@coroutinedispatcher you are right

[stephanmg]

But you should be aware of and also your team that you using alpha software

[Baldomero Napoli]

I understand ..... thank you very much for your answers, I will wait for compose release state

[coroutinedispatcher]

Or if you want so much to present compose in production, do veryyyy tiny and small pieces of change. Compose is interoperable with the current thing. However, you cannot use it outside the Android Studio Canary yet.

[Baldomero Napoli]

is that where I work, the new development of the app is going to begin, so we are analyzing what technologies to start, and they liked jetpack compose a lot, so they asked me how safe it was to start the app with this library

[Nikhil]

I didn't know that jetpack compose only works in canary version!

[coroutinedispatcher]

I think you should better ask an internal google engineer or wait for some AMA on reddit. This is a tricky question IMO.

[Jeremy]

If your app is simple and you test it I think its OK to deploy on alpha libs. Be aware that APIs are likely to change will will require rework