Reading about all the new multi-platform project features has made me curious - are there any plans to eventually have the same cinterop tooling from Kotlin Native on the JVM Kotlin?
This would be really convenient not only for writing multi-platform libraries (same C interface on both platforms), but also because cinterop on Kotlin Native is actually more convenient than any solution that exists on the JVM today (Swig, JNA, JNR, etc.).
I wouldn’t be surprised to see an ‘easy’ way emerge for interoperation between Kotlin JVM and Kotlin Native - in fact I’d be more surprised if it didn’t.
However, as far as the more general problem of easier native interop with Kotlin JVM is concerned, I think it would make sense now to wait and see if Project Panama is implemented for Java itself and, if it is, piggy-back onto that.
According to this article this might come as early as March 2018 (in Java 18.3) or not too long afterwards now that 6 monthly releases are planned for new features.