With Swift being rolled out soon enough, will UE4 include an option to use Swift for use inside UE4 projects? That would definitely be a very attractive option to us. Specifically, would Swift language be supported to be coded within UE4 projects much like C++ version?
If it can make calls to C calls that would be supported out of the box… problem is UE4 building system excploits heavily on C++, for example Unreal Header Tool which generates extra header files based on UFUNCTION, UCLASS etc. macros to make engine aware of class structure will only work with C++ or else it needs to be rewriten specially for Swift, not to mention UBT also would need to be modified heavily.
So i think for Swift there would need to made seperate build envriament and considering its languege made only for iOS and OS X (for now?) Im not sure if it worth investment for engine made to be more portable.
On that note, would it be possible to reference Swift library functions inside UE4 C++ files? Or through some wrappers?
If you can access those libs in C++ then yes. There no such thing as “UE4 C++” it’s normal C++ and you can do everything that you can do with any C++ software, but UBT (Unreal Build Tool, program that manages and operate compiler, like “make” in unix-like systems) makes using outside libs a little more complicated, but in general you should use UE4 API which are portable and you are sure things gonna compile (but don’t need to work) on any U4 supported platform without change line of code.
Indeed. You’re the best Shadow!
FYI swift can access C function natively. it’s a bit tougher for c++ but doable.
Also note that the whole stack will be open source and run on linux, so I guess that a port to other platform is also possible.
Swift is awesome and I would love to have it in UE4!
Any new developments here?