I should have mentioned the goal here is to reduce...

# compiler

[Olivier Notteghem]

I should have mentioned the goal here is to reduce the scope of future recompilations. Indeed, by tracking more granularly the subset of jars AND classes withhin these jars used (or needed) during a compilation with Kotlin compiler, build systems could achieve compilation avoidance more effectively.

A solution in JAVA world was made possible via https://www.jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=199 (see section 2.1) : by abstracting the file system, java compiler now exposes for instance which classes were loaded during compilation.

Is this currently achievable with Kotlin Compiler? Please note that working from the output of kt compilation itself (ex : KC plugin, or processing output jar) would need not only to extract external classes dependencies, but also the chain of parent classes for its of these dependencies (because we'd need to keep track to changes for correctness of compilation avoidance). Therefore, a more abstract solution (i.e file system abstraction) is likely preferable.

Thanks for any input!