Simplifying Kotlin Compile-Time Code Instrumentation

Since Kotlin can be translated for different targets such as the JVM, WebAssembly, or Native, traditional load-time instrumentation would have to be re-implemented for each such compilation target. A target-agnostic solution is to instrument code at the compiler’s Intermediate Representation (IR) level. However, the official compiler API for this is low-level and verbose, posing a significant barrier. We present KIRHelperKit, a library that simplifies Kotlin compile-time code instrumentation. It drastically reduces the number of lines of code needed to develop custom multi-platform performance profilers that work seamlessly across all Kotlin targets, significantly reducing development effort.