Is Kotlin 100% compatible with ART on Android?

Question

ART is the “new” Dalvik runtime on Android and have replaced it since Android 5.0. I’m really keen about Kotlin & JavaFX running on JVM v8. I’m not sure wich bytecode version the Kotlin compiler generates or is going to generate once it reaches v1.0 release state.

So the question is: Is ART capable of running “Kotlin code” now and will it be able to run Kotlin code in the future, e.g. when the Kotlin compiler is going to emit Java8 bytecode? Or does ART not depend on the bytecode emitted by the Kotlin compiler?

Answer 1

Compatibility with Android is among our top priorities, so be sure that Kotlin will support ART when it's released. Currently Kotlin produces byte code version 1.6, so it's compatible, and we will continue to support this target until majority of Android clients runs newer byte code versions.