{"id":474463,"date":"2024-05-22T11:40:49","date_gmt":"2024-05-22T10:40:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.jetbrains.com\/?post_type=amper&p=474463"},"modified":"2024-08-30T15:27:08","modified_gmt":"2024-08-30T14:27:08","slug":"amper-update-may-2024","status":"publish","type":"amper","link":"https:\/\/blog.jetbrains.com\/en\/amper\/2024\/05\/amper-update-may-2024","title":{"rendered":"Amper Update May 2024 \u2013 Standalone Build Tool, New IDE Features, and More"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A lot has happened since our last update about Amper<\/a>, an experimental build tool by JetBrains. In this post, we\u2019ll look at a brand-new way of using Amper, see how the tooling has improved recently, and learn what\u2019s new in Amper 0.3.0.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Standalone Amper build tool<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

We initially built Amper as a Gradle plugin, providing only a configuration layer on top of the existing Gradle build tool. This helped us prototype quickly and focus on validating the Amper user experience. Using Gradle-based Amper also allows incremental adoption within an existing project, as well as adding arbitrary Gradle configuration to your Amper modules.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the same time, we\u2019ve been experimenting with making Amper a standalone build tool that doesn\u2019t just delegate to an existing system, but handles most build tasks itself. This allows us to have full control over the developer experience, ensure that the entire build configuration is declarative, and provide great tooling integrations for the build tool in the IDE. It also opens up opportunities for performance improvements, such as faster resolution and dependency downloads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The standalone version of Amper is now available for you to try as a preview<\/strong>, in addition to the Gradle-based version. It currently works with JVM and Android applications, including the use of Compose Multiplatform for these targets. Support for iOS applications is in progress and will be available in later releases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Amper handles the project import, configures the environment and SDKs used by the project, resolves and downloads dependencies, invokes compilers, and runs applications and tests. It delegates some tasks to external tools in certain scenarios \u2013 for example, the Android Gradle plugin for parts of Android builds, or Xcode build tools for iOS builds. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Projects set up with the standalone version of Amper use the same configuration file format but contain Amper\u2019s own executables (amper<\/code> <\/em>and amper.bat<\/code>)<\/em>. Check out the usage page of the documentation<\/a> to learn more about the available tasks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

You can run tasks from the command line or use the tooling offered in Fleet or IntelliJ IDEA:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To get started, try some of the new sample projects using Amper<\/a> as the build tool. We look forward to hearing your feedback!<\/p>\n\n\n

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\n Discuss in the Slack channel<\/a>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Tooling improvements<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

One of the primary goals of Amper is to provide excellent tooling support, which is enabled by using declarative module files, making it possible to reason about the configuration. Below are some of the recent tooling improvements available in Fleet 1.35<\/a> and IntelliJ IDEA 2024.2 (currently available as an EAP build<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Quick-fixes in Kotlin source code<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Some problems that you encounter while editing your Kotlin sources can be solved by modifying your build configuration, such as by adding compiler flags. As Amper module files are declarative, there is a single straightforward way to make these modifications in them, allowing us to provide reliable quick-fixes in these scenarios.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, you can add a module-wide opt-in for an opt-in annotation:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Setting up projects from scratch<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Amper\u2019s tooling support can help you set up new projects or quickly create new modules in an existing project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To start a new Amper project from scratch, create an empty module file. There are various templates to choose from, and you can also write your own configuration with completion support:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Merging configuration blocks<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

A frequent use case for editing build configurations is copying code from another file, documentation, or other sources, and pasting it into your existing configuration. To make this easier, we now offer a quick-fix to merge duplicated blocks in your configuration files:<\/p>\n\n\n\n