AnkiDroid Common is a Gradle module containing utility functions, and definitions for core functionality used by other modules within AnkiDroid. Common should be the base of the AnkiDroid dependency tree.

Common is used by libAnki (which has no Android dependencies), so dependencies on the Android framework should be in packages named android.

This module is expected to define interfaces which are initialized in the AnkiDroid module

Definitions/interfaces exposing core functionality e.g. CrashReportService, UsageAnalytics

These are to be initialized higher up the dependency tree, typically in AnkiDroid

Utility classes and methods without an Android dependency

Extension methods, universally applicable to the classes they extend

Examples:

• Int.kt - ifNotZero
• InputStream.kt - convertToString

Utilities with a dependency on Android

This is a work in progress. As discussed in #12582, AnkiDroid decided to split the codebase into two modules, libAnki (business logic) and AnkiDroid (code interacting with Android APIs).

At the time of writing, this split is not yet done. We expect to do it with the following steps:

• com.ichi2.compat was deemed to be an easy module to split out to trial this refactor but this had circular dependencies
• A common module was proposed to fix this
• To reduce the execution time of tests, libAnki should have no dependencies on Android
  • A lint rule will be applied to libAnki from using Android dependencies
  • The alternate: splitting modules based on architecture was deemed to be unwieldy

The following were blockers for compat to be split out

• isRobolectric
• CrashReportService
• showThemedToast
• TimeManager (maybe)
• @KotlinCleanup (maybe)

Discussed on Discord: https://discord.gg/qjzcRTx

• Discussion: https://discord.com/channels/368267295601983490/701922522836369498/1243991110888591482
• Thread: https://discord.com/channels/368267295601983490/1244372448233914438
• #16498