Kotlin/Native for Multiplatform development

Slides of my talk at the AndroidTO. Toronto, 6th November 2018.

Transcript

1. Kotlin/Native for
   Multiplatform
   Development
   Enrique López Mañas
   Google Developer Expert
   

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2. Ego Slide
   • Freelance Dev
   • Google Developer Expert
   • @eenriquelopez
   

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3. Multiplatform development
   < Costs
   Sharing code within the company
   Feature teams
   > Quality
   

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4. Multiplatform development
   Platform Proprietary
   Hybrid HTML &
   JavaScript Frameworks
   Cross-platform
   Native
   

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5. Kotlin
   Modern language
   

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6. Kotlin
   Interop
   

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7. Kotlin
   Community support
   

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8. Kotlin
   Top-notch tooling
   

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9. Kotlin
   Sharing is optional!
   No life or death commitment
   

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10. Current situation
    Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2
    v0.7 v0.8
    v0.8.2 v0.9.3
    

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11. Kotlin/Anywhere
    Android
    Browser
    Server
    

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12. Kotlin/Native
    Common
    JVM Native
    iOS
    framework
    Your iOS
    dev
    Your
    Android
    Dev
    JS
    

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13. Kotlin/Native
    Sharing architecture (not UI)
    Shared UI is a mess
    

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14. Kotlin/Native
    - Uses LLVM (5.0)
    - Provides runtime guarantees
    - Exceptions, memory management
    - Interop with C/Objective-C (Swift)
    - Platform libraries (POSIX, Apple Frameworks, Win32, DOM, etc)
    

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15. Kotlin/Native
    Kotlin
    Compiler
    LLVM
    Kotlin Source
    Code (.kt)
    Platform
    Binary
    IR
    

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16. The compiler
    -Shares Front-end with Kotlin/JVM and Kotlin/JS
    - Written in Java and Kotlin
    - Produces bitcode via LLVM API
    

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17. Memory Management
    - ARC with Cycle Collector
    - When working pure Kotlin,don’t worry about memory management
    - Weak references supported
    - Memory sharing model
    - Different threads have disjoint object graphs
    - Object subgraphs can be transferred between threads
    - Immutable objects can be shared
    

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18. Interoperatibility
    - Interoperatibility with C, Objective-C and Swift
    - Kotlin can call C/Objective-C and vice-versa
    - Kotlin can extend Objective-C classes and vice-versa
    - Memory management aware of Objective-C runtime
    

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19. Mapping
    - Numbers are kept
    - Strings converted
    - Kotlin declarations wrapping C entities (functions, struct, unions, etc.) are auto-
    generated
    - Objective-C OO concepts (classes, protocols, blocks) are represented as
    matching Kotlin entities (classes interfaces, lambdas)
    - For Objective-C, Kotlin code can be compiled to a framework
    

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20. Kotlin Library
    - Hold collection of code for reusability and sharing
    - Own format: ‘klib’ extension, which holds metadata and bitcode
    - Tool for creating and storing libraries in repositories
    

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21. Existing native libraries
    - Ktor
    - Kotlinx.Coroutines
    - Kotlinx.io
    - Atomic-fu
    

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22. Community projects
    - Sqldelight
    - Knarch.db
    - Multiplatform settings
    - Stately
    - OKIO2 (under development)
    

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23. expect/actual
    

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24. expect/actual
    

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25. expect/actual
    

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26. expect/actual JVM
    

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27. expect/actual JS
    

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28. Considerations in state
    An object belongs to one thread
    

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29. Considerations in state
    Frozen objects can be shared by threads
    

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30. Considerations in state
    No threading primitives: synchronized, volatile
    Use atomic-fu instead
    

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31. Considerations in state
    Runtime safety: Kotlin/Native can verify safe mutability
    

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32. Concurrency - frozen objects
    Everything you have written until now is not frozen
    

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33. Get started
    git clone https://github.com/JetBrains/kotlin-native
    ./gradlew dependencies:update
    ./gradlew bundle
    kotlinc hello.kt -o hello -opt
    

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34. The future
    Hard to make predictions, easier to bet safe
    “I don’t know what will happen in 10 years, but there will
    be people asking in SO about regular expressions, and
    there will be another JS framework ”
    

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35. Flutter vs Kotlin/Native?
    Flutter - custom UI Widgets
    Dart - better Threading support
    Kotlin - more performant
    Kotlin - better ecosystem
    

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36. Recommendations
    - Use it with caution
    - Shared components
    - Keep versioning in mind
    - Do not compromise 100% of a project
    

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37. Further resources
    Kotlin Slack (kotlinlang.slack.com)
    Touchlab resources (https://github.com/touchlab)
    Kotlin Weekly (http://kotlinweekly.net)
    K/N documentation (https://kotlinlang.org/docs/
    reference/native-overview.html)
    

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