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Add support for incremental annotation processing in Gradle #1120

Description

@wrotte

My understanding is that currently, projects that include annotation processors are unable to be incrementally compiled in Gradle; such projects always trigger a full rebuild. The forthcoming Gradle version 4.7 will contain improvements that will allow for incremental annotation processing.

https://docs.gradle.org/nightly/userguide/java_plugin.html#sec:incremental_annotation_processing

Presuming Dagger fits into one of the two categories of annotation processor described in the above link, adding the required meta-data to the META-INF directory would likely significantly improve build times.

Activity

  1. tbroyer commented on Mar 28, 2018

    @tbroyer

    I'm actually 99.9% certain Dagger does not fit. @stephanenicolas?

  2. TWiStErRob commented on Apr 18, 2018

    @TWiStErRob

    Even if not directly possible, would it be possible to split the processor into two parts? e.g. one that handles @Inject on constructors (to generate _Factory and other trivial generation, incremental) and another that handles the complex graph building (full regeneration). I might not have deep enough insight, but this should help a lot, if people have modules with constructor injection, and assemble the Dagger graph at top level (:app).

  3. stephanenicolas commented on Apr 19, 2018

    @stephanenicolas
  4. oehme commented on Apr 25, 2018

    @oehme

    Why would Dagger not fit, can you please elaborate on that?

  5. ronshapiro commented on Apr 26, 2018

    @ronshapiro

    @TWiStErRob it would likely be very difficult to split the processors since they the different steps require ordering that would be hard to ensure if they're split.

    @stephanenicolas Can I suggest that we add a flag or some other way to test incap without requiring every project in the wild to release a new artifact? I don't think this scales well, and it forces the effort on project maintainers. It would be great if someone could file a bug saying "Hey, I've been using Dagger with Incap and it works great, can you add default support so I don't need to keep this ugly flag in my repo?"

    I don't love the idea of releasing an artifact with incap support without knowing that it works.

  6. oehme commented on Apr 26, 2018

    @oehme

    Can I suggest that we add a flag or some other way to test incap without requiring every project in the wild to release a new artifact? I don't think this scales well, and it forces the effort on project maintainers.

    The effort has to be on the project maintainers, because you really have to think about what your processor does. You can't turn a switch in Gradle and say "Let's just pretend this is incremental". That would lead to broken builds and lost trust with users. Afaik @hungvietnguyen is already planning to work on Dagger after he's done with DataBinding.

    You shouldn't rely on someone trying it out and saying "it works". There should be automated functional tests ensuring that it works. Functional testing can be done with the Gradle Tooling API.

    I don't yet see why anything would have to be split. I'd like to understand why Dagger wouldn't fit the isolating or aggregating category.

  7. TWiStErRob commented on Apr 26, 2018

    @TWiStErRob

    different steps require ordering that would be hard to ensure if they're split.

    Do you need the Blah_Factory class to be generated before you start using it? If there's an @Inject on a ctor that class will have a _Factory, right? Couldn't you just assume it'll be there next to Blah by the time the real compilation gets to it? You control both processors, so you can assume that it'll do these steps. I'm sure there's more to it than I see currently, just throwing this out there.

  8. stephanenicolas commented on Apr 27, 2018

    @stephanenicolas

    I agree with @oehme that testing is the way to go more than letting users experiments. The amount of complexity to rely on users. And only maintainers can have a good understanding of their AP to declare their behaviour to gradle.

    I don't think a release for a flag is so much of an issue, but I believe there is much more fine grained understanding of incap necessary to flag the AP properly.

    Though, about testing, I don't like so much the idea of integration tests, because they can slow down running tests and also use a non standard testing framework. A better solution would be to modify the google testing lib that most APs use for unit tessting to check that the right elements are passed to the filer when creating files. This seems to be doable and would provide very little change to existing tests to make sure incremental behaviors are working fine.

    I am not too sure about the current status of this issue, but it could be a key to faster tests of incremental annotation processing: google/compile-testing#58

  9. oehme commented on Apr 27, 2018

    @oehme

    Not sure what you mean by "non-standard" testing framework, you can use JUnit just like you would for any other test and call Gradle through the Tooling API. End-to-end tests are key to ensure that this actually works. Unit tests are of course better to test all kinds of corner cases. But if I had to choose a place to start, end-to-end always get my recommendation.

  10. ronshapiro commented on Apr 27, 2018

    @ronshapiro

    @oehme @stephanenicolas that's fine and your opinion is totally valid, but I think it's unlikely for project authors to write integration tests for a particular build system's compilation strategy. I don't think we'd ever trust a single voice saying that it's working, but if a larger group gives it a try and can all verify, that's a strong signal. There are many build systems available, and taking away the effort from project maintainers can help features take hold.

  11. oehme commented on Apr 27, 2018

    @oehme

    We can't take that effort away from the maintainer, they actually have to know what the processor is doing and ensure that complies with the constraints mentioned in the incremental annotation processing documentation. We put in a lot of work to make it as transparent as possible (i.e. no new APIs), but there are still lots of things a badly behaved processor could do to break it. Hence the opt in which only someone with deep knowledge like the maintainer can do.

  12. oehme commented on May 5, 2018

    @oehme

    This is the highest voted issue on both our and your issue tracker. For many Android users this is the only thing standing between them and fast incremental builds. How can I help move this forward?

  13. ronshapiro commented on May 6, 2018

    @ronshapiro

    I have reread the docs over and over... and I still don't understand what would make an annotation processor aggregating. All I know is what it can't do.

    What happens in this case?

    class Foo implements Bar {
      @Inject Foo() {}
    }
    
    interface Bar extends RandomAccess {}
    
    @Module
    abstract class FooModule {
      @Binds abstract RandomAccess from(Foo foo);
    }
    
    @Component(modules = FooModule.class)
    interface TestComponent {
      RandomAccess r();
    }

    If Bar is changed to no longer implement RandomAccess, does that cause every other file to be recompiled? Or no because RandomAccess has no methods and/or Bar has no annotations that Dagger declares?

  14. ronshapiro commented on May 6, 2018

    @ronshapiro

    Or, what about this:

    @Retention(SOURCE)
    @interface MaybeScoped {}
    
    @MaybeScoped
    class Blue {
      @Inject Blue {}
    }
    
    @Component
    @MaybeScoped
    interface BlueComponent {
      Blue blue();
    }  

    If I add the @javax.inject.Scope annotation to @MaybeScoped, do the other files get recompiled?

    JSR 330 states that all scopes must be RUNTIME retention, but that's not enforced by dagger (we operate on whatever we can see). We don't declare javax.inject.Scope as an annotation that we process over because it's a meta-annotation.

    Would this functionality still be considered in "aggregating"?

  15. tasomaniac commented on May 6, 2018

    @tasomaniac

    I wonder if these question can be answered by setting up a Gradle functional test suite?

  16. 12 remaining items

  17. oehme commented on Aug 29, 2018

    @oehme

    It should be fine to read the options before you say which you support. The latter is only there so javac can warn when an option was not used by anyone.

    Apart from that the PR looks 👍

  18. autonomousapps commented on Oct 18, 2018

    @autonomousapps

    @ronshapiro just wondering when we might expect a release with this feature?

  19. ronshapiro commented on Oct 19, 2018

    @ronshapiro

    Thanks for the reminder. Just released 2.18.

  20. wbervoets commented on May 17, 2019

    @wbervoets

    Is this the correct way to pass this to Dagger from Gradle?:

    android { defaultConfig { javaCompileOptions { annotationProcessorOptions { arguments ["-Adagger.gradle.incremental", "-Adagger.formatGeneratedSource=disabled"] } } }

  21. eleventigers commented on May 17, 2019

    @eleventigers

    @wbervoets to support both Kotlin and Java I have it configured (with other options) as:

    // Enables Dagger fastInit mode, which reduces component building latency by loading less classes,
    // see: https://google.github.io/dagger/compiler-options.html#fastinit-mode
    def optionFastInitEnabled = '-Adagger.fastInit=enabled'
    // Disables Dagger code formatting to speed builds,
    // see: https://google.github.io/dagger/compiler-options.html#turning-off-code-formatting
    def optionFormattingDisabled = '-Adagger.formatGeneratedSource=disabled'
    // Enabled incremental annotation processing support, since Kotlin 1.3.30
    // See: https://kotlinlang.org/docs/reference/kapt.html#incremental-annotation-processing-since-1330
    def argumentIncremental = 'dagger.gradle.incremental'
    
    subprojects {
        pluginManager.withPlugin('kotlin-kapt') {
            kapt {
                javacOptions {
                    option(optionFastInitEnabled)
                    option(optionFormattingDisabled)
                }
                arguments {
                    arg(argumentIncremental, 'true')
                }
            }
        }
    
        afterEvaluate {
            tasks.withType(JavaCompile.class) {
                options.compilerArgs << optionFastInitEnabled << optionFormattingDisabled
            }
    
            if (pluginManager.hasPlugin('com.android.library') || pluginManager.hasPlugin('com.android.application')) {
                android {
                    defaultConfig {
                        javaCompileOptions {
                            annotationProcessorOptions {
                                arguments[argumentIncremental] = 'true'
                            }
                        }
                    }
                }
            }
        }
    }
    
  22. kartikisharma-qz commented on Jun 19, 2019

    @kartikisharma-qz

    @eleventigers Is the aforementioned code block necessary for dagger version, 2.23.1? Currently, when scanning for dependencies that do not support incremental annotation processing without the code block, I do not get any warnings.

  23. kahakai commented on Sep 18, 2019

    @kahakai

    @eleventigers Is the aforementioned code block necessary for dagger version, 2.23.1? Currently, when scanning for dependencies that do not support incremental annotation processing without the code block, I do not get any warnings.

    It's enabled by default since Dagger 2.24.

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