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Kotlin/Native

Kotlin/Native is an LLVM backend for the Kotlin compiler, runtime implementation, and native code generation facility using the LLVM toolchain.

Kotlin/Native is primarily designed to allow compilation for platforms where virtual machines are not desirable or possible (such as iOS), or where a developer is willing to produce a reasonably sized self-contained program without the need to ship an additional execution runtime.

Using published Kotlin/Native versions

The most complete experience with Kotlin/Native can be achieved by using Gradle, IntelliJ IDEA or Android Studio with KMP plugin if you target iOS.

If you are interested in using Kotlin/Native for iOS, then Kotlin Multiplatform portal might be useful for you.

Command line compiler is also available.

More information can be found in the overviews of Kotlin/Native and Kotlin Multiplatform.

On macOS Kotlin/Native requires Xcode 12.5 or newer.

Contributing

You can contribute to Kotlin/Native in many ways. See the relevant page on the website.

See also the general contribution guidelines for this repository.

Building from source

Prerequisites:

  • configure Kotlin build as specified in main readme
  • at the root directory of the repository, create local.properties file with kotlin.native.enabled=true line
  • macOS: Xcode 26.0 or newer

    • if you're seeing a build error like this

        > Failed to apply plugin class 'org.jetbrains.kotlin.xcode.XcodeOverridePlugin'.
     > org.jetbrains.kotlin.konan.MissingXcodeException: An error occurred during an xcrun execution. Make sure that Xcode and its command line tools are properly installed.
       Failed command: /usr/bin/xcrun -f bitcode-build-tool
       Try running this command in Terminal and fix the errors by making Xcode (and its command line tools) configuration correct.
      • try running sudo xcode-select -s /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer
      • check if it helped via xcrun --find bitcode-build-tool which should print the correct path

    • on macOS aarch64, CInterop functionality is available only using aarch64 JDK builds, e.g. Eclipse Temurin 17.0.5 or Azul Zulu JDK8

      Note: using JDK x86_64 on macOS aarch64 will cause java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError for libclang.dylib

  • Linux: glibc 2.23 or newer
  • Windows:
    • Microsoft C++ build tools for Visual Studio 2019 14.29. It might work with other VS2019 versions, but this was never tested.
    • Windows SDK 10.0.18362.0 or newer

The commands below should be run from the repository root.

To compile the basic compiler distribution from sources, run following command:

./gradlew :kotlin-native:dist

It will build compiler and stdlib for host target, without platform libraries.

To get platform libraries, add distPlatformLibs task, e.g.

./gradlew :kotlin-native:dist :kotlin-native:distPlatformLibs

To run the full build:

./gradlew :kotlin-native:bundle

This will produce compiler and libraries for all supported targets.

After any of the commands above, ./dist will contain Kotlin/Native distribution. You can use it like a distribution of command-line compiler.

Or configure Gradle to use it -- just add the following line to gradle.properties in your Gradle project:

kotlin.native.home=/path/to/kotlin/kotlin-native/dist

To compile your programs with a command-line compiler, use:

./dist/bin/kotlinc-native hello.kt -o hello

To compile a faster, optimized binary, use -opt:

./dist/bin/kotlinc-native hello.kt -o hello -opt

Interoperability

To import a C or Objective-C library, use ./dist/bin/cinterop tool. See the documentation for more details.

Note: on macOS aarch64, JDK aarch64 is required

Running tests

For tests, use ./gradlew :nativeCompilerTest :nativeCompilerUnitTest --continue.

Note: on macOS aarch64, JDK aarch64 is required

For more details see Testing.

More tips and tricks

More tips and tricks that might be useful when developing or debugging Kotlin/Native can be found in HACKING.md.

Some Kotlin/Native compiler internals are described in the corresponding docs directory
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