r/KotlinToolchain

Someone on the Kotlin Slack asked if the Kotlin Toolchain will ever build Android apps without Gradle

Joffrey Bion (from the JetBrains Kotlin Toolchain team) confirmed that the long-term plan is to drop Gradle entirely and call Android SDK tools directly, though it will take time and help from Google

What runs natively today (No Gradle):

• SDK provisioning & dependencies
• Compilation & AAR packaging
• Unit tests & emulators

What still delegates to Gradle for now:

• Mockable android.jar (asked Google to decouple this)
• R class generation
• APK/AAB packaging (D8/R8, manifests, signing)

Pretty cool that building Android without Gradle is an actual official goal tbh