kotlin-tooling-native-build-performance

First classify the scenario (local vs CI, debug vs release, cold vs warm), then measure with kotlin.build.report.output=file or --scan. Common fixes are enabling Gradle build and configuration caches, keeping ~/.konan warm in CI, and building only the debug framework task your loop needs.

Local loops often run broad tasks like assembleXCFramework, which builds release binaries for every target — release linking is roughly an order of magnitude slower than debug. Use a specific task such as linkDebugFrameworkIosSimulatorArm64 or the Xcode embed task instead.

Kotlin/Native stores its compiler distribution in ~/.konan, which ephemeral CI runners lose between runs. On GitHub Actions, cache ~/.konan with actions/cache keyed on the OS and libs.versions.toml hash to avoid cold-start downloads every build.

Yes. transitiveExport = true exports the entire transitive dependency closure and disables dead code elimination in many cases. Remove it and keep explicit export(...) entries only for modules whose API Swift or Objective-C code calls directly.

kotlin.incremental.native=true is experimental: it recompiles only changed klib parts and can help warm rebuilds after small edits. Enable it only with user agreement, label it experimental in reports, and revert if it causes inconsistent builds.