Kotlin Script Support for JBang

[linux-china]

kt is Kotlin source code, and kts is Kotlin Script Code, and they are different.
IntelliJ IDEA bundles Kotlin by default, and you can write any kts code in any project opened with IntelliJ IDEA even without kotlin in classpath. Of course, code completion is available for kts file.

kotlin-main-kts script ends with .main.kts and contains maven artifacts resolver, and not hard to parse and convert to JBang model.

• @dependsOn -> //DEPS
• @repository -> //REPOS
• @import -> //SOURCES

demo.main.kts example:

@file:DependsOn("org.apache.commons:commons-lang3:3.9")
import org.apache.commons.lang3.StringUtils

StringUtils.center("Hello, Jbang!", 20)

IntelliJ IDEA can resolve artifacts for main.kts, and I think it's called script context. Code completion with third artifacts is available for script, and this is the main reason some developers choose to write main.kts and not Java.

Compare to kt file, main.kts has some advantages:

• main script own dependencies, and kt file should use project's classpath
• no directory required: kt file should be in source directory

Groovy script shares same script context strategy alike kotlin script, and code completion is available from @grab annotation.

I will do some research about script context for normal Java file with plugin support, if it's available, and I think code with Java snippet is very convenient with code completion.

Compile kts or eval by kotlin command line?

Now you can use kotlin demo.main.kts to execute the kts file, but it's very slow and performance is not good. Compile main.kts with kotlinc demo.main.kts may be good solution with JBang, and you can also compile main.kts to native by jbang --native demo.main.kts.

References:

• Kotlin Scripting support: https://github.com/Kotlin/KEEP/blob/master/proposals/scripting-support.md