Gradle buildSrcVersions VS kotlin-libraries-playground

Lately I've been using gradle with kotlin-js and a mix of npm and jvm dependencies. There's the https://splitties.github.io/refreshVersions/ plugin that I can recommend if you are using gradle (with or without kotlin-js).

It manages plugin dependencies, library dependencies, and version dependencies. It can use the new gradle version catalog or not if you prefer. On first use, you migrate your versions and it extracts these to a versions.properties (or your version catalog). Then whenever you run refreshVersions it indicates available new versions in comments in this file. It also indicates unused dependencies. Though for npms this is a bit harder. All you need to do is manually use the versions you want.

I run this frequently to stay on top of upstream changes. Few software engineers realize that the testing and integration overhead with version changes multiplies (just like with other forms of change). Libraries that you haven't updated amount to technical debt that you haven't addressed. So, the workload increases massively if you don't update for a while. Staying up to date minimizes the workload. This plugin makes that super easy.

Given that we are using kotlin-js, we have to deal with a rapidly evolving library ecosystem so we do have occasional issues that we need to work around by either downgrading or fixing some code. Whenever I can't update something, I document it in my versions.properties with a comment. Often you just have to wait for the next release or so for things to straighten out. The price of using cutting edge software.

Kotlin-js manages a yarn lock file as well. So it properly locks dependencies. Whenever you update npm dependencies, you have to run a command to upgrade the lock file. There's also a whole mess of webpack dependencies that comes along with kotlin-js.

{$% embed https://github.com/splitties/refreshVersions %}

I need a Gradle plugin for managing version upgrades for dependencies. I used refreshVersions; however, I don't like how those dependencies end up in multiple files, e.g., versions.properties vs lib.versions.toml. I want something simpler. So, what do you prefer?

As somebody with a deep personal hatred of TOML I recommend refreshVersions https://github.com/jmfayard/refreshVersions just a million times better and will support version catalogs soon maybe

refreshVersions, it is literally the best

Note that I'm using gradle refreshVersions to make it easy to keep the project up-to-date. Therefore, the versions are not defined in the build.gradle files, they are centralized in the versions.properties file. RefreshVersions is bootstrapped like this in settings.gradle.kts:

Also the official sample for gradle refreshVersions

I remembered the experience of learning from the Kotlin Koans and wanted to have something similar. The kotlin-libraries-playgound project came out of this simple idea, and grew and grew. Today it contains samples for Apollo, CliKt, Kodein DI, Kodein DB, Exposed, Fuel, Hoplite, Klaxon, Konad, Konf, Kotlin Collections, Kotlin Faker, Kotlin IO, Kotlinpoet, Kotlin Statistics, Kotlinx Serialization, Ktor Client, Mordant, Moshi, OkHttp, OkIO, Picnic, Retrofit, Skrapeit, SqlDelight, Statemachine, ..., KoTest, Mockk, Spek, Strikt, Mockito, Junit-Jupiter, ... ...