I’m planning on starting a project soon that will ...

# multiplatform

[Landry Norris]

I’m planning on starting a project soon that will require server, desktop, cli, and maybe mobile or web, and I’d like to make it entirely in Kotlin Multiplatform. The current plan is to make a monorepo, but I’m wondering if it would be better to set it up as separate projects inside of a folder or use several modules in one project, with a module for shared code, and a module for each platform. My primary concern is that I’ll need to be able to deploy each platform (desktop, server, mobile) separately once I get that far. What is the suggested setup for something like this?

[mbonnin]

I'd vote for single git repo + multiple gradle modules

[mbonnin]

Being able to share code between your backend and frontend is super nice

[mbonnin]

You can always deploy individual modules separately

[Landry Norris]

I was leaning towards modules. How is deployment when doing this? Does config get annoying?

[mbonnin]

It depends your workflow but I wouldn't expect anything to be too complicated

[mbonnin]

Worst case you have to call ./gradlew :backend:deploy instead of ./gradlew deploy

[mbonnin]

nothing good CI/script can handle

[Landry Norris]

Since I'll be using Compose for UI, which requires a specific kotlin version, is there a good way to use newest kotlin for server/cli and a different version for desktop/mobile?

[mbonnin]

Ouch, I know nothing about that but that does sound like it could complicate things....

[mbonnin]

I'd hope you can use the Compose version of Kotlin for all the rest and that in a couple of months everything becomes streamlined

[Landry Norris]

I can look into it. It’s not a dealbreaker if the Kotlin version has to be the same for the platforms.

[Landry Norris]

Thank you. I think I’ll look into setting up one project with different modules. I once set up a project with one git repo that had two separate gradle projects in separate folders, but keeping models in sync got a bit annoying.

[ephemient]

it is possible to use different kotlin versions in different included builds, and compose a larger build out of that

[mbonnin]

So composite builds instead of multiple modules?

[mbonnin]

I think I'd still try to use the same Kotlin version everywhere, sounds easier to manage and I've had some issues with IDEA + included builds

[ephemient]

personally, I'd split into as few composite builds as possible, because there are still some annoyances across them (e.g. ./gradlew test runs all tasks named test in the build, but not included builds)

[mbonnin]

Yea, running tests from included builds from IDEA is also another thing that isn't super reliable

[ephemient]

if you can get away with a single kotlin version for all your modules, all the better. but if not, it is possible to work around

[ephemient]

well, you can run :includedBuild:test without any issues, it just doesn't happen when you run an unqualified test

[mbonnin]

I'm talking in the UI + debugging

[ephemient]

oh I never bother with the UI :)

[mbonnin]

I like clicking the green triangle and setting breakpoints with my mouse 🙂

[ephemient]

IIRC if you tell IntelliJ to debug a Gradle task explicitly, it does work and you can set breakpoints

[mbonnin]

I filed this some time ago: https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/KTIJ-19979

[mbonnin]

Haven't tried recently maybe it's working now