Kotlin upgrade advances K2 compiler

The 1.9.20 version of JetBrains’ Kotlin language has been published, moving the high-performing K2 compiler to a beta stage.

Kotlin 1.9.20 was announced October 31; code is available on GitHub, and update instructions also are available. With this version, the K2 compiler is now in beta for all platforms, including the JVM, native, JavaScript, and WebAssembly. It can be tried in any Kotlin project. Also, the 1.9.20 release brings K2 support in the kapt compiler plug-in. K2 is intended to substantially increase compilation performance. It has been slated to be production-ready with Kotlin 2.0. The compiler also is positioned to speed up language feature development, unify all platforms Kotlin supports, and offer a better architecture for multiplatform projects, JetBrains said.

Kotlin 1.9.20 also stabilizes the Kotlin Mulitplatform cross-platform development technology and offers a new default hierarchy template for setting up multiplatform projects. Other features include:

• Improved performance for the garbage collector in Kotlin/Native
• Support for the WASI (WebAssembly System Interface) API in the standard library for Kotlin/Wasm