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kotlinx.collections.immutable 0.5.x Migration

The 0.5.x line renames every copy-returning method on the persistent collections to a participial form (per KEEP-0459) and deprecates the old names at WARNING level with a ReplaceWith hint. Migrating is a mechanical, binary-compatible, semantics-preserving call-site rename — same parameters, order, and return type; only the name changes.

Drive it from the compiler: bump the version, recompile, and fix each deprecation warning — the warning names the replacement. Source of truth: 0.5.0-MIGRATION.md.

When it applies

Check the version the project currently uses:

• 0.3.x or 0.4.x (any pre-0.5.0) → run the migration below.
• On 0.5.x but not the latest → set the version to the latest 0.5.x and stop. All 0.5.x releases share the same renames, so a within-line bump adds no new deprecations and needs no recompile.
• On the latest 0.5.x, or on 0.6.x and later → nothing to do.

Migration

1. Find the build command

Check README.md, CLAUDE.md, or AGENTS.md for how the project builds; if it isn't written down, infer it from the build files — Gradle (./gradlew), Maven (mvn, or the ./mvnw wrapper), Bazel (a bazel wrapper), or a custom script. Record the compile command (and the test command). In a multi-module project you only need the modules that use the library, plus any you change — not a whole-repo build.

2. Baseline compile

Compile on the current version and confirm it's green. If it doesn't build now, you can't tell post-migration errors from pre-existing ones — get a working compile command first.

3. Bump to the latest 0.5.x

Find where the version is pinned — grep -rn kotlinx-collections-immutable across the build files finds it (version catalog, build script, gradle.properties, pom.xml, …) — and set it to the latest 0.5.x on Maven Central (a -beta is fine). If the build pins artifact hashes (e.g. gradle/verification-metadata.xml), update those too — the cheapest fix is to copy the new artifact's checksum straight from the dependency-verification failure message and add just that one entry, rather than regenerating the whole metadata file. The bump is binary-compatible; old code keeps compiling with warnings. (If the dependency fails to resolve with a Kotlin metadata-version error, the project's Kotlin is too old for the 0.5.x artifact — bump Kotlin first.)

4. Recompile and fix the warnings

Recompile. Each renamed method carries @Deprecated(WARNING, ReplaceWith(...)), so the compiler emits one warning per call site naming the replacement (e.g. "Use removingAll() instead"). Apply that rename. Repeat compile → fix until no kotlinx.collections.immutable deprecation warnings remain. (For multiplatform, one target compile surfaces the shared call sites. Pre-existing factory deprecations such as immutableListOf → persistentListOf appear the same way — apply those too.) A recompile that fails right after the bump is failing on these deprecations (plus, if hashes are pinned, a one-time dependency-verification error) — keep applying the renames the warnings name; don't re-run dependency-resolution or metadata-regeneration commands to try to clear it.

Trust the compiler — never find/replace by name. The same method names exist on MutableList / MutableMap / MutableSet and on the .Builder types, which mutate in place and are not deprecated. Only the sites the compiler flags (receiver statically Persistent*) get renamed; if it didn't flag it, leave it.

An Unresolved reference after a rename means the participial name isn't on that receiver — you've split a rename. A rename only compiles if the declaration and every call site move together. The library already did that for the kotlinx types, so renaming their call sites just works — but it doesn't hold for anything else that merely shares the names. When a renamed call won't resolve, there are two cases:

• The receiver is unrelated to this library (a Mutable*, a .Builder, a same-named method on some other type) — the rename was wrong; revert that site.
• The receiver is a project type the codebase is itself migrating — it implements a Persistent*, or it's the project's own wrapper whose methods echo these names and get renamed to match. The rename is right but half-done: rename the declaration and its other callers too, so the call resolves. (Deprecated overrides on an implementer are step 5.)

Decide by the receiver's declared type, never the method name — a Persistent*-named field may hold another type. This matters most when you can't lean on a fast recompile and are renaming from reading the source.

Java callers. The recompile flags them only if the build reports javac deprecation warnings (-Xlint:deprecation, usually off). If it doesn't, grep the .java files that import the library for the old names and rename the calls whose receiver is a Persistent* type.

After the renames, the compiler may report some @Suppress("DEPRECATION") as having no effect — remove those (re-read the region first, in case it still covers something else).

5. Custom implementers

If the project has classes that implement PersistentList / PersistentMap / PersistentSet / PersistentCollection, their deprecated overrides need migrating too. Find them:

grep -rnE --include='*.kt' \
  '(class|object|interface)\s+\w[^:]*:\s*[^{]*\b(PersistentList|PersistentMap|PersistentSet|PersistentCollection)\s*<' .

On Windows PowerShell, Select-String is the grep equivalent:

Get-ChildItem -Recurse -Filter *.kt |
  Select-String '(class|object|interface)\s+\w[^:]*:\s*[^{]*\b(PersistentList|PersistentMap|PersistentSet|PersistentCollection)\s*<'

(Confirm a match really lists the interface as a supertype, not just a field type or type argument.) For each, move the implementation into the new participial method and have the deprecated override delegate to it:

override fun adding(element: E): MyList<E> = /* real implementation */

@Suppress("OVERRIDE_DEPRECATION")
override fun add(element: E): MyList<E> = adding(element)

If the participial methods call each other, route those calls through participial siblings, not the deprecated names. (Add "DEPRECATION" to the suppress only when an override body itself still calls a deprecated member.) Doing this now matters: at 0.6.0 the old names become compile errors, and at 0.7.0 they are removed. See 0.5.0-MIGRATION.md for the upstream implementer guidance.

6. Run any documented follow-up steps

Do this after the renames compile clean, so that if you run low on time the call-site work is already done. Some projects document steps to run after a dependency change that the compiler won't surface — most commonly regenerating dependency-verification metadata (the gradle/verification-metadata.xml hashes from step 3). Usually the single-entry fix from step 3 is all you need; only fall back to the project's documented full-regeneration procedure (in README.md / CONTRIBUTING.md / CLAUDE.md / AGENTS.md) if that one entry isn't enough. Run it once — a full --write-verification-metadata / "resolve all dependencies" pass re-resolves the entire graph and is slow, and repeating it rarely changes the outcome. Then re-confirm the build is clean.

Rename reference

• PersistentCollection — add→adding, addAll→addingAll, remove→removing, removeAll→removingAll, retainAll→retainingAll, clear→cleared
• PersistentList (the above, plus) — add(i, e)→addingAt, addAll(i, c)→addingAllAt, set(i, e)→replacingAt, removeAt→removingAt
• PersistentMap — put→putting, putAll→puttingAll, remove(k)→removing, remove(k, v)→removing, clear→cleared

Builders (PersistentList.Builder, etc.) are not renamed — they mutate in place, so their imperative names stay.

Links

• 0.5.0-MIGRATION.md — upstream guide (source of truth, incl. implementer details)
• KEEP-0459 — naming rationale

Source: Kotlin/kotlin-agent-skills — distributed by TomeVault.