GlobalScope.launch is "delicate" - how to deal with?

Question

I'm in the process of updating my Kotlin Android app to use Coroutines 1.5.2 (previously used 1.4.3).

In 1.5.2, any uses of GlobalScope.launch are now flagged with an inspection as "delicate":

https://blog.jetbrains.com/kotlin/2021/05/kotlin-coroutines-1-5-0-released/#globalscope

Let's say I know what I'm doing (in some cases I need a scope that won't go away with the containing activity / fragment).

How do I mark these uses so they don't get flagged? The following options are suggested, but none seem good.

Option 1 - Add @DecliateCoroutinesApi to the method. This makes the method also "delicate" and any call to that now get the inspection, so that achieves nothing.

Option 2 - Add @DecliateCoroutinesApi to the class. Seems like overkill.

Option 3 - Add @OptIn(DelicateCoroutinesApi::class) to the method. Almost good, but requires a special compiler switch -Xopt-in=kotlin.RequiresOptIn . Kind of messy.

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

If you really know what you're doing, option 3 should be the way to go. @OptIn is indeed experimental but that compiler flag is a small price to pay to use experimental features via @OptIn in general. You could also not use the compiler flag, and keep the warning about the @OptIn annotation itself, but that's even messier IMO.

That said, you should really think twice about using GlobalScope . Most of the time you can instead create a scope that you control yourself (with a dispatcher and maybe a Job / SupervisorJob as well, so you can cancel coroutines when appropriate).