Follow the latest coverage, related explainers and connected technology stories.
JetBrains announced the release of Kotlin Toolchain 0.13, recommending it for most new Kotlin Multiplatform projects. The release adds an interactive project creation command, improvements for iOS and Android setup, Swift Package Manager support, and faster rebuilding of Kotlin/Native applications.
JetBrains has launched the Warm Agents plugin for TeamCity, which automatically maintains a specified number of pre-warmed cloud build agents to reduce the waiting time for CI/CD tasks. However, reducing wait times comes at the cost of consuming build licenses and incurring operating costs for idle cloud resources.
The experimental Kotlin 2.5.0 adds Companion Blocks and Companion Extensions to expand the definition of type-associated members and improve compatibility between platforms. JetBrains explains that Companion Objects will remain supported, with warnings concerning recompilation and compatibility with libraries and tools.
JetBrains calls for moving software quality assurance from a final pre-release test to a continuous process integrated into development stages and CI/CD. The article reviews the roles of static analysis, unit, integration, interface, performance, and security testing, while emphasizing that artificial intelligence tools require human verification.
JetBrains announced Air Teams, a collaborative layer for agentic software development that brings context, environments, tools, and instructions together within shared workspaces. The service is currently available to JetBrains business customers, with plans to expand it to individual users later.
Students from New York University Abu Dhabi and 42 Abu Dhabi tested their ability to turn real-world challenges into software prototypes during two hackathons supported by JetBrains. The winning projects showed that using coding agents does not eliminate the developer’s responsibility for testing, understanding and accountability.
JetBrains announced JetBrains Air, an open ecosystem of products for connecting coding agents, workflows, and governance within and beyond development environments. The ecosystem targets context, coordination, review, cost, and accountability gaps that emerge as the use of AI agents expands.
JetBrains launched Junie /demo mode in the Junie CLI tool, enabling the agent to run the application, interact with its interface, and record a video, screenshots, and an HTML report to verify the behavior of changes. The mode also integrates with GitHub Actions for use in pull request reviews and smoke tests within CI.