Hi all :wave: I'm starting to look into KMM, and I...

# multiplatform

[Yonatan Karp-Rudin]

Hi all 👋
I'm starting to look into KMM, and I've noticed that it requires installation of Android studio - I wonder if that's a hard requirement even if I have IntelliJ Ultimate, or in other words - can I avoid having both? 😄

[Jeff Lockhart]

You can use IntelliJ for most of KMP development. Android Studio does have the Kotlin Multiplatform Mobile plugin though, which adds support for running the iOS app from Android Studio, as well as a project creation wizard. There's not currently an equivalent available for IntelliJ, but you can run the iOS app from Xcode instead.

[Yonatan Karp-Rudin]

Thanks for the quick response! 🙏

[Pete Hellyer]

main thing to bear in mind is that android gradle plugin support always lags a little bit behind in IDEA, as it’s developed independently by google, and is released in android studio and then back-ported to IDEA.

[Yonatan Karp-Rudin]

As I’m actually a backend developer and just want to play abit with KMM I think it would be enough for my needs - thanks for the info @Pete Hellyer !

[Norbi]

I was about to ask a very similar question...

There's not currently an equivalent available for IntelliJ

...

android gradle plugin support always lags a little bit behind in IDEA

How do you manage to share common code between the Android client developed in Android Studio, and the server developed in Idea?

[Jeff Lockhart]

You can develop Android apps in IntelliJ IDEA. As noted, often you just can't use the latest version of the Android Gradle Plugin. But right now IDEA 2023.2.1 supports the latest AGP 8.1.x.

[Pete Hellyer]

@Norbi, the multiplatform plugin for android studio, is not a requirement really - it’s helpful when creating new projects (adds a setup wizard) and gives android studio some support for running ios apps directly from AS. You can still develop a full KMP project in idea, with no real dicfficulties - the only exception is that you have to run and compile you ios app through xcode (IMHO i’d want to do this anyway, especially if you need to create interops for 3rd party swift libraries).

that AGP lags behind in IDEA is a bit of a nuisance sometimes, but rarely if ever in my experience a hard block, and generally means when support does come it’s pretty stable.

[Pete Hellyer]

Whilst there are some caveats to using IDEA for KMP and android - the flexibility of the toolchain over android studio, for me more than compensates for the (minor) difficulties.