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Google has unveiled a new addition to the Kotlin ecosystem: the Kotlin Symbol Processing (KSP) tool. This tool simplifies building compiler plugins for developers and is compatible with Kotlin version 1.4.30.
For some time now, Google has been actively promoting Kotlin as a preferred programming language for Android app development. Today, over 60% of Android app developers use Kotlin as a compelling alternative to Java. In fact, 30% of the Google Home app’s code has been translated into Kotlin.
Kotlin developers have long sought to speed up the development process during compilation to save time. A significant challenge they faced was the lack of a native annotation processing system in Kotlin. This gap forced developers to rely on Java’s annotation processing system through KAPT (Kotlin Annotation Processing Tool).
However, KAPT faced performance bottlenecks due to Java stubs being processed by the Java annotation system. Addressing these issues, Google claims the initial benchmarks of KSP show significant performance improvements, particularly with the Room library, where KSP outperforms KAPT in terms of speed.
With experimental support for Moshi and partial support for Room, KSP emerges as a powerful alternative to KAPT. It provides developers with software modules and Android libraries to streamline the adoption of KSP annotation processors, making Android development more efficient and effective.
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