Kotlin roadmap
Last modified on | September 2024 |
|---|---|
Next update | February 2025 |
Welcome to the Kotlin roadmap! Get a sneak peek into the priorities of the JetBrains Team.
Key priorities
The goal of this roadmap is to give you a big picture. Here's a list of our key projects – the most important things we focus on delivering:
Language evolution: more efficient data handling, increased abstraction, enhanced performance with clear code.
K2-based IntelliJ IDEA plugin: faster code completion, highlighting, and search, along with more stable code analysis.
Kotlin Multiplatform: release direct Kotlin to Swift Export, streamlined build setup, and simplified creation of multiplatform libraries.
Experience of third-party ecosystem authors: simplified development and publication process for Kotlin libraries, tools, and frameworks.
Kotlin roadmap by subsystem
If you have any questions or feedback about the roadmap or the items on it, feel free to post them to YouTrack tickets or in the #kotlin-roadmap channel of Kotlin Slack (request an invite).
Subsystem | In focus now |
|---|---|
Language | See the full list of Kotlin language features and proposals or follow the YouTrack issue for upcoming language features |
Compiler | |
Multiplatform | |
Tooling | |
Library ecosystem |
What's changed since December 2023
Completed items
We've completed the following items from the previous roadmap:
✅ Compiler: Promote K2 compiler to Stable
✅ Compiler: Make Kotlin/Wasm suitable for standalone Wasm VMs
✅ Multiplatform: Improve the new Kotlin/Native memory manager’s robustness and performance, and deprecate the old one
✅ Multiplatform: Stabilize klib: make binary compatibility easier for library authors
✅ Multiplatform: Improve Kotlin/Native compilation time
✅ Tooling: First public release of the K2-based IntelliJ IDEA plugin
✅ Tooling: Improve the performance and code analysis stability of the current IDE plugin
✅ Library ecosystem: Provide an initial series of kotlinx-io releases
✅ Library ecosystem: Release kotlinx-metadata-jvm as Stable
✅ Library ecosystem: Promote kotlinx-kover to Beta
New items
We've added the following items to the roadmap:
🆕 Compiler: Improve the quality of compiler diagnostics
🆕 Compiler: Generate JVM default methods
🆕 Multiplatform: The first public release of Swift Export
🆕 Multiplatform: Enable Concurrent Mark and Sweep (CMS) GC by default
🆕 Multiplatform: Enable incremental compilation of klib artifacts by default
🆕 Multiplatform: Stabilize klib cross-compilation on different platforms
🆕 Multiplatform: Implement the next generation distribution format of multiplatform libraries
🆕 Multiplatform: Support declaring Kotlin Multiplatform dependencies at project-level
🆕 Multiplatform: Support Xcode 16 in Kotlin
🆕 Tooling: IntelliJ IDEA K2 mode complete release
🆕 Tooling: Design the Build Tools API
🆕 Tooling: Publish publicly available API reference for Kotlin Gradle Plugin
🆕 Tooling: Provide out-of-the-box debugging experience for Kotlin/Wasm targets
🆕 Tooling: Kotlin Ecosystem Plugin supporting Declarative Gradle
🆕 Library ecosystem: Implement new Dokka Gradle plugin based on Dokkatoo
🆕 Library ecosystem: Refine the Dokka HTML output UI
🆕 Library ecosystem: New multiplatform API for the standard library: Atomics
🆕 Library ecosystem: Introduce default warnings/errors for Kotlin functions that return non-unit values that are unused
🆕 Library ecosystem: New multiplatform API for the standard library: Support for Unicode and codepoints
🆕 Library ecosystem: Expand Library authors’ guidelines
🆕 Library ecosystem: Stabilize the kotlinx-io library
🆕 Library ecosystem: Improve Kotlin distribution UX: add code coverage and binary compatibility validation
Removed items
We've removed the following items from the roadmap:
❌ Multiplatform: Swift export: Design and implement support for Kotlin classes and interfaces
❌ Library ecosystem: Release Dokka as Stable
Items in progress
All other previously identified roadmap items are in progress. You can check their YouTrack tickets for updates.