You can avoid unexpected issues by keeping the Kotlin versions in your project updated, especially when updating Gradle versions.
Each Kotlin version has a minimum and maximum supported Gradle version and using incompatible versions may cause errors such as:
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BUILD FAILED in 8s
[!] Your project requires a newer version of the Kotlin Gradle plugin.
Find the latest version on https://kotlinlang.org/docs/gradle.html#plugin-and-versions, then update project/android/build.gradle:
ext.kotlin_version = '<latest-version>'
Exception: Gradle task assembleDebug failed with exit code 1
The Solution
When updating Kotlin to the latest version, update the Android Gradle plugin (AGP), Gradle, and the Java Development Kit (JDK) to avoid incompatibility issues.
First, open the project-level
build.gradle
file located in the root of your project and update the
plugins
block. The example below will update Kotlin to version 1.9.20:
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plugins {
id 'com.android.application' version '8.2.2' apply false
id 'com.android.library' version '8.2.2' apply false
id 'org.jetbrains.kotlin.android' version '1.9.20' apply false
The lines containing
com.android.application
and
com.android.library
update the Android Gradle plugin.
Next, update Gradle by navigating to the
gradle/gradle-wrapper.properties
file and changing the version number in the
distributionUrl
. Here we’re using Gradle version 8.2: