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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: July 17, 2025