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Official docs on visibility modifiers in Kotlin say that package-level elements marked private are be visible only in the module in which they are declared.
So class A declared in Module1.kt isn't visible in Module2.kt. But if I try to add to Module2.kt it's own class A I get the Redeclaration: A error.
Since I can't access in Module2.kt to Module1's A class, why isn't the name A free to use?
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Yes, you can have two classes with the same name in multiple packages. However, you can't import both classes in the same file using two import statements. You'll have to fully qualify one of the class names if you really need to reference both of them.
For convenience, Java allows you to write more than one method in the same class definition with the same name. For example, you can have two methods in ShoppingCart class named computeCost. Having two or more methods named the same in the same class is called overloading.
There are four visibility modifiers in Kotlin: private , protected , internal , and public .
Internal is a new modifier available in Kotlin that's not there in Java. Setting a declaration as internal means that it'll be available in the same module only. By module in Kotlin, we mean a group of files that are compiled together. internal class A { } internal val x = 0.
"A module is a set of Kotlin files compiled together" (Visibility Modifiers - Kotlin Programming Language).
In your example, Module1.kt and Module2.kt are separate source files and despite their names they are not necessarily part of separate modules:
private class A.Keep in mind that visibility is different from identity. Even if a class is not visible elsewhere it doesn't mean that it does not exist. Loading multiple class declarations with the same fully-qualified name can (and likely will) cause issues at run-time.
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