Google Summer of Code 2023 – Eclipse Gradle Kotlin Script Support

The Kotlin Foundation sponsored 4 projects for the Google Summer of Code 2023, and we are excited to announce the completion of the Eclipse Gradle Kotlin Script Support project! Gradle, a Kotlin Foundation member, provided mentoring support for this project, and we'd like to share details about the project.

The contributor to this project was Nikolai Vladimirov, a third-year student from Constructor University, and the mentor was Donát Csikós, a Senior Software Engineer at Gradle. The project aimed to bring support for Gradle Kotlin Scripts (.kts) to the Eclipse IDE.

The initial goal was to improve user interaction with Gradle Kotlin scripts inside the Eclipse IDE. The goal was to implement the following functionality:

• Syntax highlighting for Kotlin scripts
• Content assistance
• Go-to-definition
• Accurate diagnostics for syntax errors
• Signature help
• Hovering

Nikolai successfully delivered these features by implementing support for Kotlin scripts based on the existing kotlin-language-server project, creating a new system to separate compilation environments for each build script. Here are examples of each feature:

Syntax highlighting for .kts scripts

Content assistance

Go-to-definition

Accurate Diagnostics for syntax errors

Signature help

Hovering

Installation

The new features are not yet production-ready, and it currently does not work on Windows. Consequently, they are delivered as optional installables. You can find them in the latest update sites under the Buildship Extras - Incubating category.

Next Steps

If you'd like to get involved with improving the Eclipse Kotlin Gradle Script support, there are two parts:

• Eclipse plugin: The plugin is part of the Buildship project. The implementation is in the org.eclipse.buildship.kotlindsl.provider subproject.
• Language server: The IDE-agnostic components are implemented in this repository in the GSoC-work branch.

The remaining tasks are to add a couple of minor features and incrementally improve the reliability, stability, and performance of this plugin.

We are grateful for Nikolai and Donát's contributions to making Kotlin better for developers!