RustySwift

RustySwift is a unique approach to efficient, asynchronous bidirectional communication between Rust and Swift.

The Goal: To implement a function in Rust that can be cross-compiled into a static library for iOS and macOS (along with many other targets, but those are not our focus) and invoked asynchronously using native Swift closures.

The Challenge: Rust is ignorant of the concept of Swift closures. How can it notify Swift when the work is done? What do?

The Solution: Take a look at the comments in rust/ffi/src/lib.rs and swift/RustySwift/RustySwift.swift to see how it works.

Usage

The Swift project contains a working demonstration of the Rust integration. Open the Xcode project found in swift and run it on an iOS simulator to see it in action. You'll also find helpful documentation describing each piece of the puzzle in excruciating detail.

Building the Rust Library

Requirements: cargo and a macOS host. Optional: cargo-lipo.

The Rust binary is prebuilt and checked into the repo already. But if you want to build it manually, first add the necessary targets via rustup:

rustup target add x86_64-apple-ios aarch64-apple-ios

Then cd into rust and run:

# to build for the iOS simulator
cargo build -p ffi --release --target=x86_64-apple-ios

# to build for an iOS device
cargo build -p ffi --release --target=aarch64-apple-ios

# optionally, build a universal ("fat") binary with `cargo-lipo` instead
cargo lipo -p ffi --release

This will generate a static library in target/${TARGET}/release (or target/universal/release for the cargo-lipo command) that can be imported into the Swift project.