Using GLKMath from GLKit in Swift

Question

So I'm using a book called iOS Games by tutorials from Ray Wenderlich and trying to utilize some of the objective-C code found there to make the accelerometer control of a character in my game work. Instead of Objective-C though, I want to use Swift. I ran into an issue when trying to create a var of type GLKVector3, which represents a 3D vector. When I type in:

var raw:GLKVector3 = GLKVector3Make(irrelevant stuff)

I get the following error:

use of module GLKVector3 as type.

I have an import at the top of my swift file for GLKit:

import GLKit

Any ideas how I can get the functionality from the GLKMath files to use in my program?

Answer 1

Swift has added union support in version 1.2. The fields in imported unions are read-only, even if declared with var, but can be passed to and from C functions as necessary.

The release notes for Swift 1.2 imply that the fields may not be accessible at all, but they are still readable for at least the GLKit types:

Swift can now partially import C aggregates containing unions, bitfields, SIMD vector types, and other C language features that are not natively supported in Swift. The unsupported fields will not be accessible from Swift, but C and Objective-C APIs that have arguments and return values of these types can be used in Swift. This includes the Foundation NSDecimal type and the GLKit GLKVector and GLKMatrix types, among others.

Answer 2

With the release of beta version of Xcode 6.3/Swift 1.2 yesterday (Feb 8, 2015) it is now possible to use GLKit from Swift.

Answer 3

Here check my repo: https://github.com/noxytrux/SwiftGeom i actually build a whole lib for that, so you are no more forced to use GLKit or wait for Apple to implement it in swift.