Appendix A: Building Kotlin projects
This appendix explains how to build Kotlin code with Gradle and Maven, the two most popular build systems used with Kotlin projects.
A.1 Building Kotlin code with Gradle
The recommended system for building Kotlin projects is Gradle. Gradle has become the de-facto standard build system for Kotlin projects. It has a flexible project model and delivers great build performance thanks to its support for incremental builds, long-lived build processes (the Gradle daemon), and other advanced techniques.
Gradle allows you to specify your build scripts in either Kotlin or Groovy. Since Gradle has chosen the Kotlin syntax for build scripts as the default and recommended approach for new projects, we also use it in this book. As a side effect, this also means that both your build configuration and your actual application are written in the same language.
The easiest way to create a Gradle project with Kotlin support is via the builtin project wizard in IntelliJ IDEA, which you can find under "File | New… | Project", or via the "New Project" button on the Welcome Screen.
Figure A.1 The New Project Wizard in IntelliJ IDEA makes it easy to set up a Kotlin project.
The standard Gradle build script for building a Kotlin project looks like this: