Android / iOS app with shared Rust logic

Overview

Rust core for native Android and iOS apps

logos

Rust Android [TODO iOS badge]

This is an example that shows how to use a shared Rust core in native Android and iOS apps.

Why?

This approach gives us the best of all worlds: we prevent code duplication by using a shared library. Rust, as a highly performant and safe language is a great fit for mobile. We keep a fully native UI experience and uncomplicated access to the latest APIs of the platforms.

It's also very flexible, allowing to migrate easily between different platforms, including conventional cross-platform frameworks like Flutter or React Native. For example, you can develop your MVP with Rust+React Native or Rust+Flutter, and migrate later to native iOS/Android, without having to rewrite everything. You even can reuse your core for a web-app, using WebAssembly, or desktop app (where again, you can use native or a cross-platform framework like Electron).

Project structure

  • Rust: Repo's root.
  • iOS app: ios_app directory.
  • Android app: Repo's root as well. TODO move it to a folder android_app, like the iOS app.

Possible setups

There are different ways to integrate Rust:

As source (like in this repo)

  • Simple setup.

  • Rust is built as part of the app's build process.

  • Not ideal if there are team members unfamiliar with Rust.

As binary

The Rust binary is distributed as an external dependency.

  • Better for teams with different skillsets. Everyone works mainly with their familiar tech stack.

  • Better separation of concerns / modularity.

  • Considerably more complicated to setup than monorepo (has to be done only once though).

  • Rust binaries have to be versioned and released.

Note: it is possible to overwrite the external dependency with a local copy for local development.

As "normal" library

Here the external dependency contains the Rust binary and wrapper libraries for Android and iOS respectively (written in Kotlin and Swift), which hide the FFI/JNI, providing a simple and safe interface to the apps. This makes working with this dependency like with regular third parties.

An example for this and the binary approaches can be found here. The Android build contains a wrapper library, which is imported in the Android app with Gradle. The iOS build is distributed directly as a binary (no wrapper), using Carthage.

Note on asynchronous tasks and reactive programming

While it's possible to use asynchronous code in core, it's recommended to write it synchronously and execute it asynchronously / with reactive programming in the apps. This greatly simplifies things (see the CoEpi example, which uses Rx in the apps).

"Real world" examples

CoEpi

A mobile contact tracing app for epidemics, with Android and iOS frontends.

Xi editor

A text editor with a lot of frontends: MacOS, GTK, Electron and Windows, among others.

Other related projects

WASM-Rust-d3 example

An example that shows how to display chart data with d3/JS, using a Rust core to fetch it.

Quickstart

Install rustup

Android specific steps

  • Ensure the NDK is installed.

  • Set the NDK_HOME environment variable with path to the NDK, e.g:

export $NDK_HOME=$HOME/Library/Android/sdk/ndk/21.3.6528147/
cargo install cargo-ndk
  • Add targets
rustup target add aarch64-linux-android armv7-linux-androideabi x86_64-linux-android i686-linux-android
  • Run the project in Android Studio. This will build Rust, put the binaries in the correct place and start the app.

iOS specific steps

  • Add targets
rustup target add x86_64-apple-ios aarch64-apple-ios
  • Run the project in Xcode. This will build Rust, put the binaries in the correct place and start the app.

Android specifics

  • Logcat doesn't show stdout and stderr, which means that you'll not see println or panic messages (unless specially configured, like done in this repo).
  • If you're having difficulties, try reproducing the problem in a plain (non Android) Kotlin (or Java) project. The JNI is the same, but it's easier to debug, among other things, because you can see stdout/stderr.

iOS

  • iOS shows stdout/stderr as expected and is overall easier to worth with than Android, given the simpler FFI api.

Inspecting binaries

There are diverse tools to inspect the binaries, e.g.

nm -g libcore.so

Shows the external symbols, useful if you want to check that the library was generated correctly / contains the symbols from your sources.

To look for a specific symbol:

nm -g libcore.so | grep greet

Convenience

iOS

  • cbindgen: generates headers for the FFI Rust declarations. In this project, this would mean that mobileapp-ios.h would be automatically generated.

Android

  • rust-swig: similarly to cbindgen for iOS, this generates the JNI api for the Rust declarations. In this project, this would mean that JNIApi would be generated, and ffi_android.rs mostly too. You'd have to write no JNI. I personally recommend against this, at least for the beginning, as it's better to understand what's going on and JNI, while tedious, is not so complicated.

Links

Official Rust FFI docs

Rust FFI guide

Official JNI docs (tutorials may be better to start...)

Android JNI tips

Android supported ABIs

Contribute

  1. Fork
  2. Commit changes to a branch in your fork
  3. Push your code and make a pull request
Comments
  • iOS dependencies

    iOS dependencies

    Hey!

    Awesome project! I'm trying to run the iOS app (haven't tried Android yet) and I'm having some issues. Is there anything not in the README that's needed?

    I'm running on stable.

    When I run the iOS app in XCode I get

    + RUSTFLAGS='-Z embed-bitcode'
    + cargo +ios-arm64 build --target aarch64-apple-ios --release --lib
    error: no such subcommand: `+ios-arm64`
    + cargo build --target=x86_64-apple-ios --release
       Compiling log v0.4.8
       Compiling libc v0.2.60
       Compiling core-foundation-sys v0.6.2
       Compiling cfg-if v0.1.9
    error[E0463]: can't find crate for `core`
      |
      = note: the `x86_64-apple-ios` target may not be installed
    
    error: aborting due to previous error
    
    For more information about this error, try `rustc --explain E0463`.
    error: could not compile `cfg-if`
    
    To learn more, run the command again with --verbose.
    warning: build failed, waiting for other jobs to finish...
    error: linking with `cc` failed: exit code: 1
    

    I have installed x86_64-apple-ios and aarch64-apple-ios.

    opened by AxelNilsson 14
  • Few questions regarding for Android

    Few questions regarding for Android

    Hi I have some questions regarding for the development of Android using the crate:

    1. Am I able to make GUI applications?
    2. Is there too much biolerplate code in it or is it simple and clean?
    3. Is it easy to use or harder to use over something like Flutter or Android app Studio?
    opened by Joe23232 4
  • Big Sur, XCode 12.5.1, link fails

    Big Sur, XCode 12.5.1, link fails

    ld: library not found for -lSystem
    

    Workaround is to add this block to ios_app/build-rust-xcode.sh

    # From https://github.com/TimNN/cargo-lipo/issues/41#issuecomment-774793892
    if [[ -n "${DEVELOPER_SDK_DIR:-}" ]]; then
      # Assume we're in Xcode, which means we're probably cross-compiling.
      # In this case, we need to add an extra library search path for build scripts and proc-macros,
      # which run on the host instead of the target.
      # (macOS Big Sur does not have linkable libraries in /usr/lib/.)
      export LIBRARY_PATH="${DEVELOPER_SDK_DIR}/MacOSX.sdk/usr/lib:${LIBRARY_PATH:-}"
    fi
    
    opened by rjrjr 1
  • Requires Android NDK 22

    Requires Android NDK 22

    Due to https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/pull/85806, this is broken by the last Android NDK (23). Symptom is failed link, unable to find library -lgcc.

    Workaround is simple enough, downgrade to NDK22, e.g.

    export NDK_HOME=${ANDROID_SDK_ROOT}/ndk/22.1.7171670
    

    Might want to make a note in the README?

    opened by rjrjr 0
  • Flutter

    Flutter

    I've been designing a Rust library for usage with Flutter. I see that you're doing Kotlin/Java <-> Rust here, but you mention Flutter.

    Is there a plan to make a template for Flutter? Because there are 2 methods to consider: FFI vs Plugin call. Since plugin calls are very slow, FFI should be prefered, but what to do when Rust needs JNI objects? You can't pass them through Flutter's FFI

    opened by lattice0 3
Owner
Ivan Schütz
iOS and Android freelance developer
Ivan Schütz
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