V 5.0
- Internal code migrated to Kotlin
This update does not contains any change visible to the user, but internally the whole codebase was migrated from Java to Kotlin.
I love Kotlin, but until now using kotlin always increased the app size by a crazy amount (at least the apk). Last time I tested it, however the size increase was minimal (it did increase, but similar to the increase of adding a new asset).
I'm going to take this opportunity to test the java->kotlin migration in a real-world scenario. This update will be available only as the beta of the normal (not donation) version. And it will stay there for a couple weeks. Once I'm sure it is as usable as the java one, I'll upload it as stable (only the normal, not donation) and carefully monitor the usage, crashes and real size.
This will tell me once and for all if Kotlin is now a good replacement for small apps, or if it's just a java syntax-sugar with a crazy overhead.
I'll try to post my findings.
Findings: The size increases, but it is almost unnoticeable (signed full apk: 200Kb->242Kb). It seems that the trick is to target java 21...hmm 🤔 Fine for me!