Kotlin 2.2.20 boosts WebAssembly support

Kotlin 2.2.20 has been released, with the latest version of the concise, multiplatform, “pragmatic” programming language bringing its WebAssembly-compilation component, Kotlin/Wasm, into beta.

JetBrains announced Kotlin 2.2.20 release on September 10. The release includes a beta version of the Kotlin/Wasm tool for compiling Kotlin code into WebAssembly (Wasm), with improvements to exception handling in JavaScript interop, NPM dependency management, browser debugging support, and a new shared source set for js and wasmJs targets, JetBrains said.

In explaining why a stable release of Kotlin includes a feature in a beta stage, JetBrains said that while core components such as the standard library are considered stable and production-ready, other components, such as Kotlin/Wasm, may still be in a pre-stable stage, such as beta. This is part of an approach to provide early access to features for feedback while clearly marking their stability level, the company noted.

Also with Kotlin 2.2.20, Kotlin Multiplatform now makes Swift export available by default, provides stable cross-platform compilation for Kotlin libraries, and introduces a new approach to declaring common dependencies, letting developers declare common dependencies in the kotlin {} block by using a top-level dependencies {} block in projects that use Gradle 8.8 or higher.

For the Kotlin language itself, Kotlin 2.2.20 improves overload resolution when passing lambdas to overloads with suspend function types. Kotlin/Native, for compiling Kotlin code to native binaries, now has support for stack canaries and smaller release binaries. Additionally, Kotlin/JS, for translating Kotlin code into JavaScript, now compiles Long values into JavaScript BigInt.

The Kotlin plugin supporting Kotlin 2.2.20 is bundled in the latest versions of the IntelliJ IDEA and Android Studio IDEs. With Kotlin 2.2.20, developers also can try out upcoming language features planned for Kotlin 2.3.0, including improved overload resolution when passing lambdas to overloads with suspend function types, and support for return statements in expression bodies with explicit return types.

Instructions for installing Kotlin 2.2.20 can be found at blog.jetbrains.com.