Compiling to Other Targets

In addition to all the capabilities that Kotlin offers, it’s one of the few languages that can be compiled to different targets.

• On Android devices: Kotlin is considered a first-class language for Android development. We’ll explore using Kotlin to create Android applications in Chapter 20, ​Writing Android Applications with Kotlin​.

• To JavaScript: transpilation is compiling from the source code of one language to the source code of another language. You can see how to transpile Kotlin to JavaScript in Appendix 1, ​Transpiling to JavaScript​.

• To native targets: when compiling down to a virtual machine isn’t an option, Kotlin/Native can be used to compile your source code to different native targets like iOS, Linux, MacOS, Windows, and others, and can be executed without a virtual machine. See Appendix 2, ​Kotlin/Native​, for an introduction to using Kotlin/Native.

• To WebAssembly to run in browsers: using Kotlin/Native, you may also compile Kotlin source code to WebAssembly or Wasm,^[15] which is a binary format for virtual machines that run within modern browsers. In Appendix 3, ​Kotlin to WebAssembly​, we’ll explore this capability to create Kotlin code that runs within browsers.