Package: wnpp Severity: wishlist * Package name : kotlin Version : 1.2.30 Upstream Author : JetBrains and open source contributors * URL : https://kotlinlang.org/ * License : Apache 2 Programming Lang: Kotlin Description : Statically typed programming language for modern multiplatform applications
Extract from Wikipedia: Kotlin is a statically-typed programming language that runs on the Java virtual machine and also can be compiled to JavaScript source code or use the LLVM compiler infrastructure. While the syntax is not compatible with Java, Kotlin is designed to interoperate with Java code and is reliant on Java code from the existing Java Class Library, such as the collections framework. Kotlin uses aggressive type inference to determine the type of values and expressions for which type has been left unstated. This reduces language verbosity relative to Java, which demands often entirely redundant type specifications. -- Kotlin has been voted second most loved language in StackOverflow's 2018 survey: https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2018/#most-loved-dreaded-and-wanted Note that this is a qualitative survey, Kotlin's actual use is more similar to Scala or (!) Perl in the survey: https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2018/#most-popular-technologies It's also part of the Android SDK since 3.x. A significant effort has been made to package the Android SDK in Debian, and it seems reasonable to further this effort with this popular language. I have found Kotlin's syntax to be an attractive alternative to Java. It was indeed designed to provide a way out of the Java ecosystem which I find interesting in itself. Kotlin seems to be partly self-hosted: 73% of the source is kotlin, while 26% is Java: https://github.com/JetBrains/kotlin It does require a Java JVM to function, or can be compiled with LLVM as well. I do not plan on maintaining this package, I just thought it would be useful to track efforts for its (eventual?) inclusion inside Debian in the BTS.