Build Tools

The compiler commands used in the previous section are tedious to type. This manual approach to compilation is impractical for anything other than very small programs. Instead, we generally use specialized build tools.

Build tools can

• Download dependencies: libraries of code used by an application
• Compile files efficiently—e.g., only those that have changed since the last compilation
• Run tests and report on the results
• Perform checks on code style or code quality
• Generate API documentation from doc comments
• Package a library or application for deployment and distribution

You encountered the Make build tool last year, when working with C. Make is a very basic tool, designed to support efficient compilation and not much else.

In this module you will be using two different build tools that are more powerful than Make. Gradle is a well-established, standard build tool for Kotlin and Java applications. Amper is a newer and simpler alternative to Gradle, from the creators of Kotlin itself.