
So it only makes sense that we would shift our Android development at Meta to Kotlin as we work to make our development workflows more efficient. In recent years, Kotlin has become a popular language for Android development.
We’re open sourcing various examples and utilities we used to manipulate Kotlin code as part of this migration. As of today, our Android codebase contains over 10 million lines of Kotlin code. Kotlin is a popular language for Android development and offers some key advantages over Java.
We’re sharing lessons learned from shifting our Android development from Java to Kotlin. The reason is that directly using the FernFlower will lead to a complicated converted code, which will be hard to read and understand.
Use the command java -jar fernflower.jar file_name.class to get the converted Java source file.Īlthough we can use both methods to convert a Kotlin file to a Java file, it is recommended to use IntelliJ IDEA or Android Studio. Use FernFlower to get the fernflower.jar file (To get the jar file, run the Gradle build after downloading the FernFlower project). Compile the Kotlin source file using the kotlinc file_name.kt command to create the class file. We can do this by following the steps below: Hence, if we don’t want to use IntelliJ IDEA or Android Studio for conversion, we can directly use FernFlower. The IntelliJ decompile option uses the FernFlower to generate the back-end code. Convert Kotlin Code to Java Code Using FernFlower The process to convert Kotlin to Java in IntelliJ IDEA is the same. Checkmark JVM 8 Target and click on the Decompile button to get the Java code. Navigate to Tools > Kotlin > Show Kotlin Bytecode. Open the Kotlin file that should be converted to Java. Here’s a step-by-step demonstration for converting a Kotlin file to a Java file using Android Studio. Convert Kotlin Code to Java Using Android Studio/IntelliJ IDEAĬonverting a Kotlin file to a Java file consists of two steps: There are two ways to convert Kotlin code to Java code Android Studio/IntelliJ IDEA or FernFlower. Since Kotlin and Java use JVM, converting one language’s file to another is possible. Convert Kotlin Source File to Java Source File To use Java-specific features like operator overloading and static methods.
Compile and run in Java to detect bugs or other issues. We may need to convert our Kotlin source file to Java for the following reasons: Hence, converting a Kotlin source code file to a Java one is essential. Kotlin’s success is because of interoperability with Java as both use Java Virtual Machine (JVM).