what's the difference between `"implementation"` a...

# announcements

[Bruno_]

what's the difference between "implementation" and implementation? either I can't use search engine or noone explains it

https://docs.gradle.org/5.0/userguide/multi_project_builds.html#sec:project_jar_dependencies

-.kt

[Dominaezzz]

They do the same thing.

[Bruno_]

@Dominaezzz in the end, yeah they should. The thing is if I extract dependencies block to .gradle.kts I can't use the latter one without applying plugins. I've asked because I don't understand how it works and when to use it

[Dominaezzz]

The latter is quite limited as every possible string isn't statically defined. Only implemention, api, compile, etc. You don't get testImplementation but you can work-around that with "testImplementation". I think of the former as a work-around.

[gildor]

This is not a "workaround", string version is default way to define dependency in configuration, type safe version is available only when you applied plugin, so Gradle knows exactly which configurations are available in this plugin, so it may generate type safe accessors

[gildor]

This topic covered in migration guide
https://guides.gradle.org/migrating-build-logic-from-groovy-to-kotlin/#configurations-and-dependencies

[gildor]

For your example above you cannot use type safe accessors

[Dico]

Think you need to use special plugins {} block no?

[gildor]

This wouldn't be something different

[gildor]

Because in this case you apply configurations for submodules, so there is no type safety

[gildor]

Even if you would have type safe accessor in your root project because applied plugin, using it for submodules wouldn't be safe

[gildor]

But I wouldn't say this is something wrong, it's completely valid case, and Gradle doesn't pretend that you can use type safe accessors when cannot prove that it's actually type safe

[gildor]

There are some other approaches about extracting common configuration and using plugins, but it's another topic