What is a Kotlin module? - kotlin

Question

In the Kotlin documentation they are mentioning some kind of module for instance in the documentation for the internal modifier.
However I couldn't find any definition of the term module itself. So what is meant by module?

Answer 1

A module is a set of Kotlin sources compiled together:
an IntelliJ IDEA module;
a Maven project;
a Gradle source set;
a set of files compiled with one invocation of the Ant task.
This is in the same docs article about visibility modifiers. :)

Answer 2

From the Kotlin's documentation, a module is a set of Kotlin files compiled together:
an IntelliJ IDEA module
a Maven project;
a Gradle source set
a set of files compiled with one invocation of the <kotlinc> Ant task.
That is #hotkey's, but I would like to complement this answer.
According to Andrey Breslav, the Lead Language Designer of Kotlin:
a Kotlin module maps one-to-one to IntelliJ's module (iml-file).
According to IntelliJ's documentation:
Modules allow you to combine several technologies and frameworks in one application. In IntelliJ IDEA, you can create several modules for a project and each of them can be responsible for its own framework.
When it comes to a Maven project or a command line compilation, Andrey states:
Each compiler run, by default, is a separate module: all the binary dependencies will be treated as being not in the module being compiled at the moment.
Also, a Gradle source set is a module, with the exception that the test source set can access the internal declarations of main.
This means that if you have different build flavors in your Gradle configuration resulting in different source sets, for production and debug versions for example, then an internal class from one source set would not be available to be used in another source set.

Answer 3

Per Kotlin language specification §10.2 Modules:
A module is a concept on the boundary between the code itself and the
resulting application, thus it depends on and influences both of them.
A Kotlin module is a set of Kotlin files which are considered to be
interdependent and must be handled together during compilation.
In a simple case, a module is a set of files compiled at the same time
in a given project.
A set of files being compiled with a single Kotlin compiler invocation
A Maven module
A Gradle project
In a more complicated case involving multi-platform projects, a module
may be distributed across several compilations, projects and/or platforms.
For the purposes of Kotlin/Core, modules are important for internal
visibility. How modules influence particular platforms is
described in their respective sections of this specification.

Answer 4

I think you might be referring to org.koin.core.module.Module
A Koin module is a "space" to gather Koin definition. It's declared with the module function.
val myModule = module {
// Your definitions ...
}
This documentation would be helpful in that case.