Hello, What are the advantages and disadvantages from declaring the versions catalog in a .toml file...

# gradle

[Guilherme Delgado]

Hello,
What are the advantages and disadvantages from declaring the versions catalog in a .toml file vs “in-gradle”:

[versions]
some = "123"

[libraries]
my-lib = { group = "com.mycompany", name="mylib", version.ref="some" }

+

dependencyResolutionManagement {
    versionCatalogs {
        create("libs") {
            from(files("../gradle/libs.versions.toml"))
        }
    }
}

versus:

dependencyResolutionManagement {
    versionCatalogs {
        create("libs") {
            library("my-lib", "com.mycompany", "mylib").versionRef("123")
        }
    }
}

Personally I prefer separating in a .toml file and the “simpler” syntax, but other than that I couldn’t figure it out by reading this doc. Thanks!

[mkrussel]

One benefit of the .toml file is that it can be shared between projects. I used it to share versions between the main gradle build and the buildSrc project.

[Guilherme Delgado]

Good point, I don’t use buildSrc but I do use “build-logic” with conventions plugins which, in the end, are different projects.

[mbonnin]

Tools like renovate or so might be able to process the toml files more easily than build.gradle

[Vampire]

What the others said, plus as a pro point for the API, you are more flexible if necessary, like combining sources into one catalog and so on.

[Joffrey]

I'm not 100% sure, but there might be a benefit for the TOML file regarding changes. Any change to the catalog in a gradle settings file or build file might force to rebuild more things than a change to the TOML file.

[mbonnin]

Was thinking about this too. It's true for Kotlin script (because the *.gradle.kts file needs to be recompiled). I don't think it's true in Groovy? The file being reevaluated each time and I don't think that invalidates the tasks themselves

[Vampire]

iirc also the Groovy files are precompiled, would be ridiculous if not actually.
So I think yes, if the settings script got changed, I think all tasks need at least to be reconfigured, but it shouldn't make them out-of-date I think, but not sure.
With the TOML it is definitely better in that regard, yes.