FAQ
You will find hereafter answers to common questions. For more details or to get in touch directly, see our contact options.
What is the Kotzilla Platform?
💡 The Kotzilla Platform is a specialised debugging tool for Kotlin developers using Koin. Developed by the creators of the Koin framework, the platform allows you to visualize and resolve thread performance issues, memory leaks, and structural app issues, during development and in production.
What’s the magic behind the Kotzilla Platform?
💡 The Kotzilla Platform leverages Koin’s container to automatically detect critical issues such as performance bottlenecks, dependency problems, and crashes, all with minimal overhead and no instrumentation required. These issues are displayed in your IDE, allowing you to quickly identify and resolve them directly from your development environment
Can I use the Kotzilla Platform for free?
💡 Yes, the developer plan is free and includes unlimited time usage of Kotzilla Platform with a limited quota of events per app per month. Details available here. No payment details are required.
How is the Kotzilla Platform different from observability tools like Firebase, Sentry, Embrace or BugSnag?
💡 Firebase, Sentry, Embrace, or BugSnag focus on production crash analysis and performance issues detection related to network latencies or long database queries. However, they require manual logging and tracing to troubleshoot complex issues related to component lifecycles, dependencies, and multithreading. The Kotzilla Platform, on the other hand, automatically captures critical data to help you resolve issues related to performance, threading, dependency complexity, and crashes, before they even hit production.
How is Kotzilla Platform different from the Android Studio Debugger?
💡 While Android Studio’s debugger is great for development, it requires manual breakpoint setup and can significantly slow down your app. It struggles with debugging multithreaded interactions, especially in optimized code, and its performance impact makes it unsuitable for production. The Kotzilla Platform, in contrast, automatically tracks execution flow with minimal overhead, even in production environments, allowing you to visualize and debug issues without the slowdown.
What issues can the Kotzilla Platform help me identify?
💡 The Kotzilla Platform helps identify a range of issues including startup delays, slow background tasks, main thread bottlenecks, inefficient dependency resolutions, complex dependency graphs, and performance slowdowns caused by individual dependencies, all of which can impact app performance, maintainability, and stability. It also provides insights into crashes across Android, Kotlin Multiplatform (KMP) apps, and SDK libraries.
Can I detect issues directly in my IDE using the Kotzilla Platform?
💡 Yes, the Kotzilla Platform integrates with your IDE through the Koin IDE Plugin, allowing you to detect issues directly within your development environment. It helps visualize Koin configurations, spot issues related to component lifecycles, dependencies, performance, and threading, and allows you to investigate further in the Kotzilla Console for deeper insights.
How can I get started with the Kotzilla Platform
💡 This getting started tutorial will guide you through the steps to configure the Kotzilla SDK and help you identify the first issue in your app using the Kotzilla Platform
Is the Kotzilla Platform compatible with KMP apps?
💡 Yes, the Kotzilla Platform is fully compatible with Kotlin Multiplatform (KMP) apps. It provides comprehensive insights into component issues, dependencies, and crashes across both Android and iOS devices.
Can I debug my SDK library with the Kotzilla Platform?
💡 Yes. with the Kotzilla Platform you can debug your SDK libraries and white-label apps using Koin isolated contexts to pinpointing problems down to specific lines of code.
What are the dependencies of the Kotzilla SDK libraries? Are any Google libraries required?
💡 Google libraries are not required. The Kotzilla SDK uses only full Kotlin Multiplatform (KMP) and Ktor, along with Koin. Koin itself only links the basic Android libraries, such as those related to Activity and Fragment.
Can I enrich the data collected by the Kotzilla SDK?
💡 Yes, the Kotzilla SDK API allows you to add custom messages, trace performance of specific code sections, and add session/user ID properties. For more details, please refer to the official API documentation.
Can I collaborate with my team on debugging my app?
💡 Yes! By upgrading to the Dev Team or Enterprise plan, you and your teammates can collaborate in real-time to debug issues across all your apps and SDK libraries. You can invite team members to investigate and resolve issues together, enhancing collaboration during development. Take a look at the details and team features
What version of Koin should I use?
💡 The Kotzilla SDK is compatible with Koin 3.5+.