What is the best IDE to use for KMM? The <FAQ sugg...

# multiplatform

[humblehacker]

What is the best IDE to use for KMM? The FAQ suggests Android Studio, while also saying that one can use Intellij Ultimate with some limitations. Android Studio works for the most part, but there's no support for Swift.

I typically do most of my iOS dev in AppCode, and I was happy to find a KMM plugin for AppCode. However, opening the project created in Android Studio in AppCode with the KMM plugin installed resulted in a number of issues, such as the project requiring conversion to a KMM project, facets that cannot be loaded, and a lot of red in the Kotlin syntax highlighting.

I also tried creating the project in AppCode, but after restarting AppCode and reloading the project, I got the same facets cannot be loaded error ("unknown face type" kotlin-language and android). [edit: I updated AppCode while composing this, and just needed to reinstall the KMM related plugins].

Most of these are probably just growing pains for KMM, and I can open tickets for these things, but as someone just getting started with KMM, which IDE should I stick with for the least amount of difficulty?

[Big Chungus]

I'd go for ApoCode as it's the only one where you can do everything.

[Etienne]

I'm finding that I can't really 'do everything' unless I have AppCode / AndroidStudio / IntelliJ open

(for my own project that targets iOS/Android/Web)
AS doesn't 'support'/understand certain launch flags (--continuous) for web, and doesn't have JS debugger support either. (edited)
IntelliJ doesn't support the latest AGP so my project has to 'stick' to AGP 7.0.0
And I haven't used AppCode with my latest efforts, but I'm guessing the Android support won't be any better that IntelliJ.
So far, keeping them all open 'sorta' works, beyond being forced to stick to older AGP versions.

[humblehacker]

Thanks for giving me the benefit of your experience Martynas and Etienne. Looks like there's no one perfect IDE yet. For mobile only, AppCode looks like the best so far. At least I get proper highlighting/completion for both Kotlin and Swift. However, there's no SqlDelight plugin for AppCode, so I'll still have to switch back to AS for that.

[edenman]

yeah and if you want swiftui previews, ofc you need Xcode. We just did a hack week project and I kept Xcode+AS open and just switched back and forth

[humblehacker]

I've been intending to try out the Injection III plugin for Swift UI previews from AppCode.

[Alexander Black]

In my experience definitely not one best IDE for doing it all. I use android studio on the JVM / common code side and Xcode on the iOS / swift side. I've played with app code but found it lacking in many ways… obviously so is XCode, but it at least seems to be somewhat consistent, plus you can debug your native code using the touch lab plugin.

[Viktor Orlyk]

This is really annoying. That I need to switch between ide, and if You don’t have powerful enough computer you actually need to close ide each time when need to open other

[Alexander Black]

Ya it's certainly not super convenient… but beats writing the same core code again for each supported app platform.

[Alexander Black]

I'd recommend anything with an M1 or M2 chip in it. I have a MacBook Pro with the M1 Max and it's really fast for our build times especially on the iOS side… I've noticed a huge speed boost I've x86

[Alexander Black]

My coworker has a Mac mini M1 and it works great as well