Hi, is there any tutorial on how to work with multiple gradle modules ?

# getting-started

[Ayfri]

Hi, is there any tutorial on how to work with multiple gradle modules ?

[Tim Oltjenbruns]

Yes, I would look at Gradle’s documentation itself

[Tim Oltjenbruns]

there are not many specifics for Kotlin gradle modules.

[Tim Oltjenbruns]

what are you trying to accomplish?

[Ayfri]

I have a Kotlin/JS library that gives typings to a JavaScript library, but this JavaScript library has many optional dependencies and plugins, so I want to set typings also into other modules, but I've never used multiple modules for a project before

[Tim Oltjenbruns]

Basically you make a new folder for the second module, set it up pretty much like the first, and when one needs to depend on the other you use implementation(project(":projectName")) instead of a maven dependency

[Tim Oltjenbruns]

If your current module is the root module, I suggest moving that into a subfolder first so they are siblings rather than parent-child

[Ayfri]

Thanks ! Also, the JavaScript library has like 20 optional plugins (I've just done typings for 6 of them), do I really need to have all these folders in my project or won't it be cleaner to have a directory for all these ?

[Tim Oltjenbruns]

Depends how you want to bundle them. If you want them all bundled separately, you need a separate folder for each

[Ayfri]

No I mean like a plugins folder with all modules inside

[Tim Oltjenbruns]

Sorry I’m not following, what is in this folder? The JS modules?

[Tim Oltjenbruns]

If you have a 1:1 relationship with the JS plugin to the KT typing/gradle module then I would expect each gradle module to have the JS plugin it depends on in it’s folder

[Ayfri]

I mean like this file tree:

/buildSrc
  build.gradle.kts
/gradle
/main-module
  build.gradle.kts
/plugins
  /plugin1
    build.gradle.kts
  /plugin2
    build.gradle.kts
  /plugin3
    build.gradle.kts
build.gradle.kts
gradle.properties
...

[Tim Oltjenbruns]

Yes you can do that.

[Tim Oltjenbruns]

if plugin 1 needs to depend on plugin 2, then plugin 1 does implementation(project(":plugins:plugin2")

[Tim Oltjenbruns]

if plugin 1 depends on main-module then you can do implementation(project(":main-module"))

[Ayfri]

okay I see, thanks I'll try !

[Tim Oltjenbruns]

If you don’t want the :plugins prefix you can get around it with the settings.gradle.kts file. But I’ll save my breath unless you really want to do that

[Ayfri]

Yeah I don't need that

[Ayfri]

Also, publishing should be kept at root build.gradle.kts ? But then how can I target a jar to be published from a specific module ?

[Tim Oltjenbruns]

you would have a publishing plugin and task on each submodule

[Tim Oltjenbruns]

but if you like the root can call all the publish tasks

[Ayfri]

I guess that signing and nexusPublishing should be kept at root as it will be the exact same thing for each modules ?

[Tim Oltjenbruns]

sharing config across gradle modules is a huge topic worthy of it’s own discussion

[Tim Oltjenbruns]

The naive way to do it is use allprojects in the root gradle file. It’s not performant, but it works.

[Tim Oltjenbruns]

It breaks configuration avoidance which means gradle will configure all your modules, even if you only want to build one.

[Ayfri]

I'm having Projects must be configuring error in each submodule no matter what I try :/

[Tim Oltjenbruns]

Try settling with the duplication for now. Apply the publishing Gradle plugin and configure it in each and every submodule.

[Tim Oltjenbruns]

It's not pretty but it will rule out some other issues

[Ayfri]

Oh, I was just having a dependency not found, fixed it and everything working now x)