Skip to main content

Arrow Optics for Gradle in beta

ยท 2 min read

In order to unlock the full power of Arrow Optics, lenses and prisms for your own types must be defined. This is a tedious task, that can be automate with the help of the @optics annotation. Alas, setting up the plug-in is not easy (especially in Multiplatform projects), and the architecture of the plugin means that you need to write a companion object explicitly on every one of your types.

We've been working on making this process easier, and the result is the new Arrow Optics plugin for Gradle. This plugin configures your project to process @optics annotations, taking care of all the peculiarities of Kotlin JVM and Multiplatform plugins. Furthermore, it sets up the Kotlin compiler to generate companion object automatically (if they are not already present), saving time and boilerplate.

This new plugin is in beta, the KSP plugin still remains the officially supported way to generate optics. But we would also love feedback on the new approach, with the goal of making this simpler option the default. If you want to try the new plugin, you need to:

  • Remove any previous configuration of the Arrow Optics KSP plugin,
  • Add id("io.arrow-kt.optics") version "2.2.0" to your plugins block,
  • Call arrowOptics() at the end of your kotlin block.
plugins {
    id("io.arrow-kt.optics") version "2.2.0"
}

kotlin {
    // compiler, target, and source set configuration
    // ...
    arrowOptics()
}

Please let us know of any issues you encounter or any feedback on how to make the process even more approachable, in either our issues page or the #arrow channel on Kotlin Slack.