Plain Kotlin module in Android Studio 3.0, `api` is not supported?

Question

Started in Gradle plugin 3.0 (Android Studio 3.0), the compile command has been replaced with api and implementation. It is explained here https://blog.mindorks.com/implementation-vs-api-in-gradle-3-0-494c817a6fa

However, for a pure Kotlin module as below, I can't use api. i.e. the below code will have error when I perform a sync

apply plugin: 'kotlin'

dependencies {
    implementation fileTree(dir: 'libs', include: ['*.jar'])
    api "org.jetbrains.kotlin:kotlin-stdlib-jre7:$kotlin_version"
}

The error is

Could not find method api() for arguments [org.jetbrains.kotlin:kotlin-stdlib-jre7:1.1.2-4] 
on object of type org.gradle.api.internal.artifacts.dsl.dependencies.DefaultDependencyHandler. Open File`

I have to use the 'deprecated' compile instead.

Why isn't api supported when in a pure kotlin module?

Answer 1

compile isn't deprecated in Gradle, but only in specific plugins, namely Android and Java Library plugins. The standard Java plugin hasn't made this change. Neither has the Kotlin plugin, yet. It probably will eventually (possibly after the issues described in the Java Library documentation will be solved).