Article by Ayman Alheraki in October 31 2024 01:11 PM
Rust can be used to develop applications for both Android and iOS, thanks to several libraries and frameworks that facilitate cross-platform mobile development. Here are some notable options:
This plugin allows you to integrate Rust into your existing Android applications using Gradle. You can write performance-critical parts of your app in Rust and call them from your Java/Kotlin code.
The Rust package manager, Cargo, supports building libraries for Android. You can compile your Rust code to a shared library (.so
file) that can be used in Android apps.
Similar to Android, there are tools and scripts available for compiling Rust code for iOS. This typically involves setting up Xcode projects to link to your Rust libraries.
If you're using Flutter for mobile development, you can write Rust code for performance-sensitive parts of your app and call it from Dart. This can be done using the ffi
(Foreign Function Interface) to call Rust functions.
For React Native apps, you can write native modules in Rust and use them within your JavaScript/TypeScript code.
While not specifically mobile, compiling Rust to WebAssembly allows you to create web applications that can run on both mobile and desktop platforms. You can use this approach in hybrid apps or Progressive Web Apps (PWAs).
gtk-rs
: Although primarily for desktop applications, GTK can be used to build cross-platform applications that include mobile platforms.
native-windows-gui
: Similar to GTK but for building native GUI applications, including support for mobile platforms.
While Rust provides the ability to write performance-critical code for Android and iOS, you might still need to use the platform's native tools (Java/Kotlin for Android and Swift/Objective-C for iOS) for UI development and other platform-specific features. This approach often leads to a mixed-codebase where Rust handles certain performance-sensitive components, while the rest of the application is developed using the native language of the platform.
In summary, Rust can indeed be used to develop mobile applications for both Android and iOS, particularly in scenarios where performance is a key concern. However, it often works best in conjunction with the native development environments of these platforms.