Announcement: General availability of generic client code generation and related breaking changes

[0marperez]

What's changing

We are pleased to announce Smithy Kotlin code generation is now generally available starting with version 1.6.0. See our quick-start guide in the smithy-examples repository.

As part of the work to make this feature available, we've made some changes to existing components which may cause breaking changes in your code. If you do not use codegen features or generate service clients from scratch then you are unaffected by this change.

Starting at version 1.6.0, we will synchronize the version numbers across runtime and codegen modules. Also, our codegen modules have been renamed from:

• software.amazon.smithy.kotlin:smithy-kotlin-codegen → aws.smithy.kotlin:codegen
• software.amazon.smithy.kotlin:smithy-aws-kotlin-codegen → aws.smithy.kotlin:aws-codegen
• software.amazon.smithy.kotlin:smithy-kotlin-codegen-testutils → aws.smithy.kotlin:codegen-testutils

Note the namespace for our codegen modules has changed from software.amazon.smithy.kotlin to aws.smithy.kotlin. And, the RPC v2 CBOR protocol implementation has been moved out of the software.amazon.smithy:smithy-aws-kotlin-codegen module into aws.smithy.kotlin:codegen.

How to migrate

1. Upgrade all of your smithy-kotlin dependencies to v1.6.0 or later.
2. Update your codegen dependencies as follows:

• software.amazon.smithy.kotlin:smithy-kotlin-codegen → aws.smithy.kotlin:codegen
• software.amazon.smithy.kotlin:smithy-aws-kotlin-codegen → aws.smithy.kotlin:aws-codegen
• software.amazon.smithy.kotlin:smithy-kotlin-codegen-testutils → aws.smithy.kotlin:codegen-testutils

3. Update any imports that previously used the software.amazon.smithy.kotlin namespace to now use aws.smithy.kotlin.
4. Update your RPC v2 CBOR protocol dependency as follows: software.amazon.smithy.kotlin:smithy-aws-kotlin-codegen → aws.smithy.kotlin:codegen.

Release date

This feature will ship with the v1.6.0 release planned for no earlier than 1/15/2026.

Feedback

If you have any questions concerning this change, please feel free to engage with us in this discussion. If you encounter a bug with these changes, please file an issue.