when you develop an android/desktop compose multip...

# multiplatform

[Pablo]

when you develop an android/desktop compose multiplatform app, we have two strings.xml files, one in commonMain/composeResources/values and other in androidMain/res/values. Why? can't we use commonMain strings.xml file for all platforms? for example, I see that manifest requires app_name. Can't get it from commonMain? is a requisite to have duplicated app_name in two strings.xml files?

[Big Chungus]

I just symlink the two

[Big Chungus]

Then same source of truth is accessible to both systems

[Pablo]

can you show me the process? I suposse you store all the strings in commonMain, but then, how you acces commonMain app_name from androidMain manifest for the app name?

[Big Chungus]

It's just unix symlinks

Assuming you have src/commonMain/composeResources/values/strings.xml

cd src
ln -s commonMain/composeResources/values/strings.xml path/to/res/values/strings.xml

[Big Chungus]

This way you still end up with 2 files, but editing either will update the other

[Big Chungus]

Make sure to use relative paths as absolute paths will break when you clone gh repo on another machine

[Michael Paus]

How would you handle that if someone tries to check out your project on Windows?

[Pablo]

in fact I'm using windows, that doesn't seem to be a good solution

[Michael Paus]

I am developing on a Mac but as we are talking about desktop apps I also have to build them for Windows. I do that on a GitHub runner and on this runner the project would have to be ckecked out on the windows platform, which doesn’t work because Windows doesn’t support symbolic links.

[Pablo]

so I suppose it's mandatory to have duplicated strings.xml files with duplicated properties like app_name ?

[Michael Paus]

I’d say yes.

[Pablo]

thanks

[Big Chungus]

Windows now supports symlinks too and git is equipped to handle that

[Big Chungus]

https://gist.github.com/huenisys/1efb64e57c37cfab7054c65702588fce

[Big Chungus]

Or if you're just using git bash on windows it should work just fine out if the box. I have projects with symlinks building on windows ci without issues

[Big Chungus]

This explains the situation quite well https://gitforwindows.org/symbolic-links.html