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Attaching and running the JVM Agent with your Kotlin application🔗

Version Support

The instructions below apply to Kotlin v1.5 and higher.

Prerequisites

Before running the app with the agent, make sure you have:

Running the Lightrun agent🔗

For Kotlin v1.6 and higher:

  1. Compile your application 

    kotlinc <your-main>.kt -include-runtime -d myapp.jar

  2. Run the application with the Java agent 

    java -agentpath:<path-to-agent>/lightrun_agent.so -jar myapp.jar

    For Kotlin v1.5 you might get a "no main manifest attribute". You can put the kotlin-stdlib in your classpath instead.

  3. Compile your application 

    kotlinc <your-main>.kt

  4. Run the application with the Java agent and kotlin-stdlib in your classpath 

    java -cp <path-to-kotlin>/kotlin-stdlib/1.4.20/kotlin-stdlib-1.4.20.jar:. -agentpath:<path-to-agent>/agent/lightrun_agent.so <your-main>

Optional

You can also automatically attach an agent to your launched Java processes with the JAVA_OPTS environment variable. 

export JAVA_OPTS=-agentpath:<path-to-agent>/lightrun_agent.so

Note

Kotlin expressions are limited:

  • All functions in the expression should be converted to their Java equivalent. For example, (pow -> Math.pow).
  • Expressions with Kotlin ranges and Coroutines are not supported.
Last update: October 28, 2025