Should we enforce binary compatibility for Kotlin libraries?

[zach-klippenstein]

Okio has tooling to ensure they don't accidentally break backwards binary compatibility for minor version bumps. I've not seen a lot of libraries that do this, but it seems to make sense especially for libraries that are likely to be depended on transitively. Kotlin makes it really easy to accidentally change your ABI, due to things like type inference. Should we follow suit?

Related Reading

• Maintaining Compatibility in Kotlin Libraries article

[rjrjr]

Looks like they use the JApicmp gradle plugin.

[zach-klippenstein]

This too is kotlin-aware (e.g. internal visibility).

https://github.com/JetBrains/kotlin/tree/master/libraries/tools/binary-compatibility-validator

[zach-klippenstein]

Jetbrains finally broke that tool out into its own repo/artifact: https://github.com/Kotlin/binary-compatibility-validator