Giving a talk on Multiplatform library development. Looking for thoughts on what libraries/tools developers think are critical and missing. Just comments in a thread for now I guess (or DM).

My biggest wish is that multiplatform tooling would work out-of-the-box with all the features needed for both dev and production builds, for both libraries and apps, without needing to do any custom Gradle tasks or platform-specific configurations. I want to just work purely in Gradle with the options on the standard tasks, and not have to think about what is being used under-the-hood.

same as date/time but more core, lack of locale support is rough

@Casey Brooks Kind of a different discussion, but do you want clear config or you don’t want to have to do any of it? I can’t imagine being able to output a native binary without needing to give it some info. The Android gradle build being a mature example that requires a lot of platform specific config out of the box. Not saying the native config for KMP can’t be simpler, but there’s probably a minimum

file io

Ah, right. That too.

has code generation been formalized or is that still a "you probably shouldn't try it" feature? I know serialization uses it but I would really like an MPP version of retrofit that naturally plugs in with ktor

Compiler plugins are currently very experimental. However, Jetpack Compose is also powered by a compiler plugin, and the Arrow guys are working on a library to make plugin development easier, as well as a few of their own compilers plugins.

Ah, yes. Code gen. I think the “formal” version of that is waiting on the GCRW (grand compiler rewrite). Last time I looked, which was quite a while ago, you needed to add a hook into the native compiler to make a plugin available

links https://github.com/arrow-kt/arrow-meta https://developer.android.com/jetpack/compose

Damn. Pushed onto the todo stack. A lot going on there. Need to finish this talk…

re graphql, this exists but I haven’t looked at it beyond the readme https://github.com/yshrsmz/kgql

That stuff always kind of freaks me out. It needs to be super well supported or it gets old quick. Especially with Xcode, as Apple is more than happy to break what the community has out there (our kotlin plugin needed a whole bunch of changes for Xcode 11)

yeah i do similar. But good point on xcode breakages. Maybe it’s not a solvable problem given the tooling instability.

This is a common issue and not strictly associated with KMP, Xcode, etc. Config feels like a lot of busywork that you can abstract out, but between the version changes and breadth of config options, there may simply be unavoidable “paperwork” associated with project config.

SnapKit in Kotlin/Native for iOS and co. would be cool.

@louiscad just a wrapper for iOS/macos only, or something that can be multiplatform?

box.snp.makeConstraints { (make) -> Void in
           make.width.height.equalTo(50)
           make.center.equalTo(self.view)
        }

Hmm, this doesn't look very nice...

@kpgalligan Something for Apple's OSes only. That would enable people to make higher level common APIs based on it. Would be easier for me since I don't use xml on Android, but homemade #splitties Views DSL which supports ConstraintLayout well. Last time I tried using UIKit constraints vanilla didn't work out well.

https://kotlinlang.slack.com/archives/C3PQML5NU/p1572115178209300?thread_ts=1572106811.204000&channel=C3PQML5NU&message_ts=1572115178.209300 @kpgalligan check https://github.com/icerockdev/moko-template - here already done configs for mobile development and defined many mpp dependencies (in buildSrc definifions)

I miss retrofit and non-coroutines any-thread http client

Some things I think would help much with multiplatform development: - lots of examples, like: - how to setup a greenfield iOS/Android project - how to add KMP to existing iOS/Android apps - how to create a KMP library supporting various platforms - how to test multiplatform code, and especially, how to test that it also compiles/runs on iOS (Mac CI server? yay…) - how to setup a Git containing iOS/Android - how to setup CI/CD for all those things - what should we do if not everyone in the teams have a Mac? Because those that don’t have one can’t compile iOS stuff on their machines… - some FAQ - where to get help when things go wrong (e.g. StackOverflow, this Slack) - showcases: who’s using it? This is something we need to grow together!

what i find as the biggest pain point at the moment is tooling and the fact that when you bump some dependency you might break everything adn fixing might take some time (as i am fixing something right now)

@martin.petrulak Would you use a third-party plugin that checks for ability to update the Kotlin/Native version taking into account all the dependencies you have?

@louiscad i would use enything that would simplify my life 🙂 in this case i would use the plugin for sure

Alright @martin.petrulak, I'll see if we can integrate that in #gradle-refresh-versions at some point.

@louiscad you make it work, i buy you a beer keg :)

Might want to look at Intellij’s new library search plugin. May have a version validator