In a multimodule project, managing dependencies manually can be challenging. For example, if you forget to update a library version after modifying a library version on another module, your project will have a duplicate library.
Starting from Gradle 7.4.1, version catalog is the recommended way of managing dependencies between Gradle projects (also known as a module).
To use the version catalog, simply add libs.versions.toml
file inside gradle folder (yourproject/gradle/libs.versions.toml
)
.
├── app
│ ├── build.gradle.kts
│ ├── proguard-rules.pro
│ └── src
├── gradle
│ ├── libs.versions.toml
│ └── wrapper
│ ├── gradle-wrapper.jar
│ └── gradle-wrapper.properties
├── build.gradle.kts
├── gradle.properties
├── gradlew
├── gradlew.bat
├── local.properties
└── settings.gradle.kts
Inside the libs.versions.toml
file, you can add the dependencies of your projects.
[versions]
compose = "1.2.1"
[libraries]
compose-foundation = { module = "androidx.compose.foundation:foundation", version.ref = "compose" }
compose-material = { module = "androidx.compose.material:material", version.ref = "compose" }
compose-tooling = { module = "androidx.compose.ui:ui-tooling", version.ref = "compose" }
compose-ui = { module = "androidx.compose.ui:ui", version.ref = "compose" }
[bundles]
compose = ["compose-foundation", "compose-material", "compose-tooling", "compose-ui"]
That's it! The dependencies are available across your Gradle projects.
Here is how you use the dependencies in your project's build.gradle.kts
.
dependencies {
implementation(libs.compose.foundation)
implementation(libs.compose.material)
implementation(libs.compose.tooling)
implementation(libs.compose.ui)
}
Note that Gradle converts the dash (-
) separator to dot (.
). From compose-foundation
to compose.foundation
.
Other benefits of using version catalogs are:
- Centralized version for some libraries.
By using version.ref
, we can assign the same compose version for each library. So, you just need to update a library version in one place.
- Grouping dependencies.
Oftentimes, we have many dependencies that should be declared together. We can make the dependencies declaration shorter by using bundle
, like this.
dependencies {
implementation(libs.bundles.compose)
}
Summary
By using the version catalog, we can manage dependencies easier. This can be useful for a multimodule project, which is common in a mid-sized or large-sized software project.
Heads over to the official Gradle documentation for more detail.
Note:
Gradle introduces version catalog since version 7.0, but it's still marked as an experimental feature.
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