Kotlin 2.1.20 has been released with updates to the kapt and Lombok plugins, a new DSL to replace Gradle's application plugin, and a number of improvements for WASM. 

Kotlin is the open source language originated by JetBrains and promoted by Google as a first class language for Android to replace or supplement Java.

From this release onwards, the K2 implementation of the kapt compiler plugin is enabled by default for all projects. The plugin was launched with the K2 compiler in Kotlin 1.9.20, and has now been developed so its behavior is similar to that of the K1 version, while providing significantly better performance.

Another plugin that's been updated is the Kotlin Lombok compiler plugin, which now supports the @SuperBuilder annotation. This has been implemented to make it easier to create builders for class hierarchies. Until now, developers using Lombok in Kotlin had to manually define builders when working with inheritance. With @SuperBuilder, the builder automatically inherits superclass fields so they can be initialized when constructing an object.

Kotlin Multiplatform developers get a new DSL to replace Gradle's Application plugin with a new executable {} block that configures execution tasks and Gradle distributions for JVM targets.

This release also adds a new inlining optimization pass, which comes before the actual code generation phase. The Kotlin team says the new inlining pass compiler should perform better than the standard LLVM inliner and improve the runtime performance of the generated code.

Developers targeting WebAssembly get better Kotlin/Wasm debugging and property usage. The custom formatters now work out of the box in development builds, while DWARF debugging now has code inspection, and the Provider API simplifies property usage in Kotlin/Wasm and Kotlin/JS. DWARF stands for debugging with arbitrary record format. The improvement means the Kotlin/Wasm compiler can embed DWARF data into the generated WebAssembly binary. DWARF is mainly useful for debugging Kotlin/Wasm applications inside standalone Wasm virtual machines (VMs). 

Kotlin 2.1.20 is available now.

• Mike James is the author of Programmer’s Guide To Kotlin, 3rd Ed (I/O Press) written for Java programmers, Android developers and programmers wanting to discover why Kotlin is a better Java and of Android Programming in Kotlin: Starting With An App (I/O Press).

More Information

Kotlin Home Page

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