Improving the usability of C libraries in Swift

There are many interesting, useful, and fun C libraries in the software ecosystem. While one could go and rewrite these libraries in Swift, usually there is no need, because Swift provides direct interoperability with C. With a little setup, you can directly use existing C libraries from your Swift code.

When you use a C library directly from Swift, it will look and feel similar to using it from C. That can be useful if you’re following sample code or a tutorial written in C, but it can also feel out of place.

→ swift.org/blog/improving-usability-of-c-libraries-in-swift/

Swift can call C libraries directly, but the result feels like C code: unsafe pointers, manual reference counting, and long function names. Use a module map and an API notes file (YAML) to fix this without touching the C header. This turns C enums into real Swift enums, objects into classes with automatic memory management, functions into methods with labels, bit flags into OptionSets, and more.

Enjoyed this post?

Well, you could share the post with others, follow me with RSS Feeds, send me a comment via email, and/or leave a donation in the Tip Jar.

Tags