Gradle 6 settings.gradle.kts properties problem

Question

please help me understand what was changed in Gradle 6 so the following code doesn't work anymore (worked well in Gradle 5):

val artifactoryUser: String by settings
val artifactoryPassword: String by settings

pluginManagement {
    repositories {
        mavenLocal()
        maven {
            url = uri("https://internal-artifactory")
            credentials {
                username = artifactoryUser
                password = artifactoryPassword
            }
        }
    }
}

Now I have an error: "Unresolved reference: artifactoryUser".

This problem can be solved by moving properties declaration inside the pluginManagement block

pluginManagement {
val artifactoryUser: String by settings
val artifactoryPassword: String by settings
    repositories {
        mavenLocal()
        maven {
            url = uri("https://internal-artifactory")
            credentials {
                username = artifactoryUser
                password = artifactoryPassword
            }
        }
    }
}

But I don't understand why.

Answer 1

The reason for it is mentioned in the Grade 6 upgrade notes :

The pluginManagement block in settings scripts is now isolated

Previously, any pluginManagement {} blocks inside a settings script were executed during the normal execution of the script.

Now, they are executed earlier in a similar manner to buildscript {} or plugins {}. This means that code inside such a block cannot reference anything declared elsewhere in the script.

This change has been made so that pluginManagement configuration can also be applied when resolving plugins for the settings script itself.