Is there any news of the jetbrains team working on...
# compose-desktop
s
Is there any news of the jetbrains team working on compose for ios? I remember seeing something a month or so back of the compose compiler being able to work on native. I’m curious if it’s a platform that’s being worked on yet.
b
Not directly but I think they want to eventually. But when it comes to iOS, I think these take priority / have to be done first: • The new native memory model, to bring iOS coroutine ergonomics on par with Android • The KMM AppCode plugin, allowing you to work on multiplatform iOS/Android apps within single Jetbrains IDE
Both of those are needed in order for Compose iOS to be very useful, otherwise you are better off with SwiftUI
s
I’m not sure I agree with either of your points. Compose has very little to do with coroutines. I don’t think there is even a dependency on it. Also, the plugin doesn’t sounds like a nice to have, but the current KMM plugin for Android Studio and IntelliJ is allowing people to get by just fine.
Either way, I’m just wondering if work has even started on it.
c
I’m not sure about the core Compose library, but Compose UI very much depends on coroutines. (EDIT: all the Side Effects are defined in the “compose runtime” artifact, and internally they make calls to the kotlinx.coroutines library. So yes, even in the core of Compose, it depends on coroutines)
A responsive UI is inherently asynchronous, and Jetpack Compose solves this by embracing coroutines at the API level instead of using callbacks.
https://developer.android.com/jetpack/compose/kotlin#coroutines And while I don’t think this has been fully built out yet, Compose is designed to be able to recompose in parallel (which will need the new Native memory model to really be effective) https://developer.android.com/jetpack/compose/mental-model#parallel
👌 4
All that said, it seems like the work to get Native working in the compiler was more about stabilizing the compiler in general, rather than getting to work running it on iOS immediately. I do expect we’ll see Compose on iOS relatively soon, but the issues with Native are big blockers right now, and creating a stable abstraction over native input events seems to be the other big issue.
b
Thanks, that's what I meant exactly. Yes they have "started" working on it, in spirit. Since all these behind-the-scenes things are just as important as actually writing up the UIView wrappers, etc.