Migrating a webapp to Kotlin Multiplatform... Mpola mpola

Moving your main client application to Kotlin Multiplatform isn't always plug-and-play. You are fundamentally rethinking your entire architecture and customer experience, while inventably carrying out much-needed housekeeping. Yes, one might say that today's frontier models could probably one-shot the whole migration. In theory, yes. But in practice there are usually a lot of DevX (developer experience) challenges, especially with the constraints of Uganda, which create bottlenecks to this seemingly easy change.

In this session, I will walk through the real-world migration of an ERP tool built for African SMEs (with live customers) from a standard Progressive WebApp to a fully shared KMP architecture for android and iOS. We will dive into the code to see how to build a unified design system with Compose Multiplatform, handle cross-platform dependency injection with Koin, and implement robust offline-first data persistence using the new Room 2.8.4 for KMP.

2. Key Takeaways and Learning Points:
1 Why did we do this? The product feedback that pushed us to make this decision

2 Unified DI: How to configure and leverage Koin for Dependency Injection seamlessly across both Android and iOS targets.

3 Offline-First Persistence: Implementing Room 2.8.4 in a KMP environment to ensure reliable offline functionality—crucial for African SME environments.

4 Shared UI: The challenges and triumphs of building a unified design system using Compose Multiplatform and balancing releases for desktop clients

5 Migration Strategy: Practical steps to migrate a live, complex Angular codebase to KMP without halting product development.


3. Experience Level with the Topic
Advanced / Real-world deployment: I am the Founder and Lead Engineer of a software company building this ERP system. This is not a hobby project or a simple side app; it is a complex, commercial-grade product designed to deploy at scale for businesses across Africa. The insights from this talk are drawn directly from the trenches of our recent architectural migration and production deployment.

4. Have you given this talk before?
No, this is a premiere talk. The content is based on our very recent, cutting-edge migration to the latest KMP libraries (including Room 2.8.4 and Koin 4.x), making the information highly current and never presented before.

5. Keywords
Kotlin Multiplatform (KMP), Compose Multiplatform, Koin, Room, Offline-first, Software Architecture, Migration, ERP, Startups