Migrating from KAPT to KSP: A Complete Guide to Kotlin's Future
Article Summary
Chamod Lakmal from PickMe reveals how switching annotation processors can cut Android build times in half. If you're still using KAPT, you're leaving serious performance gains on the table.
This comprehensive migration guide walks through replacing KAPT (Kotlin Annotation Processing Tool) with KSP (Kotlin Symbol Processing) for Android development. The article covers why KAPT's Java stub generation creates bottlenecks and provides step-by-step instructions for modernizing your build system.
Key Takeaways
- KSP delivers up to 2x faster compilation times compared to KAPT
- KAPT converts Kotlin to Java stubs first, adding overhead and losing type info
- Migration involves updating plugins, swapping kapt() for ksp() in dependencies
- Modern libraries prioritize KSP support over legacy KAPT
- Version catalogs approach shown for cleaner dependency management
Critical Insight
Migrating from KAPT to KSP can improve build times by up to 50% while providing better Kotlin language support and lower memory consumption.
