Forma - Kotlin first, Meta Build System with Android and Gradle support. Opinionated, scalable, thoughtfully structured, type-safe and guided way to declare your project structure. Distributed as a Gradle plugin, Forma helps developers to shift focus from Build Configuration to Project Structure Declaration, abstracting away build configuration complexity.

• You don't need to be a gradle expert anymore
• Get rid of project configuration bad practices
• Type-safe, single method configuration for your targets, no room for error
• Built-in dependency visibility rules
• Target types - enforce scalable project structure
• High-performance builds: Gradle best practices are applied automatically
• Dependencies framework - helps developers to understand and deal with transitive dependencies hell
• Extensible - be the expert when you need to!
• And much more...

⚠️ We are using target term to express application components(e.g. modules or projects, depending in the context) across documentation and code, there is a couple of reasons for that. Module term often confused with Dagger modules which makes communication harder, project from the other hand used only in Gradle context but not in other build systems like Buck and Bazel.

⚠️ This is early alpha release - please do try this at home🏠

Presentation Link

Configuration made easy:

// root build.gradle.ktspluginManagement {
repositories {
google()
gradlePluginPortal()
mavenCentral()
}
}
plugins {
id("tools.forma.android") version "0.1.3"
}
// Configure shared aspects of your android Projectbuildscript {
androidProjectConfiguration(
project = project,
minSdk =21,
targetSdk =33,
compileSdk =33,
agpVersion ="7.4.2",
extraPlugins = listOf(
"androidx.navigation:navigation-safe-args-gradle-plugin:2.5.3",
"com.google.firebase:firebase-crashlytics-gradle:2.9.4",
)
)
}

Your kotlin android library

// Single method, type-safe creation of your target// Plugins applied automatically// Project configuration shared between targets
androidLibrary(
// Mandatory, visible from build configuration
packageName ="tools.forma.sample.example",
// External dependencies declaration, one universal syntax
dependencies = deps(
google.material,
androidx.appcompat,
) + deps(
// Internal project dependencies, declared separately from externals
project(":demo-library")
),
// Test dependencies declaration
testDependencies = deps(
test.junit
),
// Android test dependencies declaration
androidTestDependencies = deps(
test.espresso
)
)

Progress

Supported target types	implemented	purpose	validation
androidBinary	✅	Generate single APK	✅
androidApp	✅	Application class	partial
androidLibrary	✅	Android library	partial
androidWidget	✅	Custom View	partial
androidRes	✅	Resources Only	✅
androidTestUtils	✅	Shared code for Android tests	✅
androidUtils	✅	Library extensions	partial
testUtils	✅	Shared code for unit tests	✅
utils	✅	JVM Library extensions	partial
library	✅	JVM Library	partial
api	✅	Feature external API's	partial
impl	✅	Feature implementation	partial

Dependency matrix

Each column represents the list of allowed/disallowed dependencies

	androidApp	androidBinary	androidLibrary	androidWidget	androidRes	androidTestUtils	api	impl	androidUtils	utils	testUtils
androidApp	❌	✅	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌
androidBinary	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌
androidLibrary	✅	❌	✅	✅	❌	❌	❌	✅	❌	❌	❌
androidWidget	❌	❌	✅	✅	❌	❌	❌	✅	❌	❌	❌
androidRes	❌	❌	✅	✅	✅	✅	❌	✅	✅	❌	❌
androidTestUtils	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌	✅	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌
api	✅	❌	❌	❌	❌	✅	✅	✅	❌	❌	❌
impl	✅	❌	❌	❌	❌	✅	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌
androidUtils	✅	❌	✅	✅	❌	✅	❌	✅	✅	❌	❌
utils	❌	❌	✅	✅	❌	✅	❌	✅	✅	✅	✅
testUtils	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌	✅	❌	❌	❌	❌	✅

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