Editing Standard Widget Toolkit (section)

=== Platform support ===
[[File:Azureus screenshot.png|thumb|[[Vuze]], a [[BitTorrent client]] which uses SWT]]

SWT must be ported to every new GUI library that needs supporting. Unlike Swing and AWT, SWT is not available on every Java-supported platform since SWT is not part of the Java release. There is also some evidence that the performance of SWT on platforms other than Windows is noticeably less efficient.<ref name="slashdotperformancebenchmarks" /> Since SWT uses a different native library for each platform, SWT programs may be exposed to platform-specific bugs.

SWT exposes programs to more low-level details than Swing. This is because SWT is technically just a layer over native library provided GUI functionality, exposing the programmer to native GUI code is part of the design intent of SWT: "Its goal is not to provide a rich user-interface design framework but rather the thinnest possible user-interface API that can be implemented uniformly on the largest possible set of platforms while still providing sufficient functionality to build rich graphical user interface (GUI) applications."<ref>{{cite web |url=http://wiki.eclipse.org/index.php/FAQ_What_is_SWT%3F |title=FAQ What is SWT |work= Eclipsepedia |publisher=eclipse.org |access-date=2009-10-16}}</ref>

Since the SWT implementation is different for each platform, a platform-specific SWT library (JAR file) must be distributed with each application.

{{As of|2018}}, SWT supports these platforms and/or GUI libraries:<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://download.eclipse.org/eclipse/downloads/drops4/S-4.8M6-201803080630/|title=4.8M6 - Eclipse Project Downloads|website=download.eclipse.org|language=en|access-date=2018-05-01}}</ref>

* <!--Not just; down to WinXP?:-->[[Windows 10|Windows]]:<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://wiki.eclipse.org/Platform_UI/Testing|title=Platform UI/Testing - Eclipsepedia|website=wiki.eclipse.org|language=en|access-date=2018-05-01}}</ref>
** [[Win32]]
** [[Windows Presentation Foundation]] (WPF), under development
* [[Unix-like]]: [[Linux]], <!--not officially listed, I believe would work:-->[[FreeBSD]]:
** [[GTK]]
<!--Too dubious, need a current source; was supported: ** [[Motif (software)|Motif]]-->
* [[macOS]]:
** [[Cocoa (API)|Cocoa]]
<!--dubious? , was supported previously only? * [[Pocket PC]]-->

{{As of|2018|03}}, SWT 4.7.3a (and 4.8M6) is officially compatible with the following operating systems (graphic library or similar if explicitly required / processors):<ref>{{cite web |url=http://download.eclipse.org/eclipse/downloads/drops4/R-4.7.3a-201803300640/ |title=4.7.3a - Eclipse Project Downloads |website=download.eclipse.org |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180416130409/http://download.eclipse.org/eclipse/downloads/drops4/R-4.7.3a-201803300640 |archive-date=2018-04-16}} </ref>

* Microsoft Windows (x86 and x86_64)
* Linux (GTK / PPC64 and PPC64LE)
* macOS (Cocoa / x86_64)

[[File:Eclipse SWT Windows XP example.png|thumb|Example application on Windows XP]]
[[Windows XP]] has historically been supported<!--unclear if the current version does 4.7.3a docs don't state and but this Wikipedia page did list it:--> as have Linux on [[ESA/390|s390]], [[Solaris 11]] (SPARCv9), [[Solaris 10]] (x86_64), [[HP-UX]] (ia64), [[IBM AIX|AIX]] (PPC and PPC64).<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://archive.eclipse.org/eclipse/downloads/drops4/R-4.6.3-201703010400/|title=4.6.3 - Eclipse Project Downloads|website=archive.eclipse.org|language=en|access-date=2018-05-01}}</ref>