One downside of this approach is, if you’re just changing versions in the config file, Gradle will rebuild the entire buildSrc which includes plugins you defined. In this approach you get the benefit of sharing your dependencies as well as using Kotlin for Gradle build files, this approach provides you with auto-completion of the versions/dependencies in your Gradle files. Gradle buildSrc & Kotlin DSL: This approach became quite popular with a lot of developers recently and even the Android team uses this approach in the Jetpack libraries.

It’s a step up from manual dependency management. With this approach, you can share the dependencies or versions or both. Gradle extra property: This approach is quite popular with a lot of developers and you can find it being used in a lot of open-source projects and Google recommends this approach as well in their docs. It gets annoying to manage dependencies either for version updates or adding/removing as the projects grow and adds more modules. Manual management: This is the basic approach that we get when we create a project, while this is good enough for most single module projects.

There are few different approaches for managing dependencies, these are generally used approaches (at least on the Android development side).

Retrofit gradle