keepUnused flag not respected for entries under [versions]

This use-case might be a misuse of the version catalog but our project stores versions that while aren’t referenced within the TOML file, they are referenced by the project (e.g. compileSdk version used in android gradle plugin).

android {
    compileSdk = libs.versions.compileSdk.get().toInt()
}

I assumed setting keepUnused = true would solve this but “unused” version declarations were still removed when running versionCatalogUpdate. I did verify that keepUnused = true was indeed working for unused library declarations.

[Egorand]

Well, these versions do not fit the definition of “used in dependencies” - they’re simply referenced in build.gradle files. @keep-ing them individually probably makes sense to me, since version catalog is not really designed for storing non-dependency versions, so @keep is a small price to pay for convenience!

[hvisser]

Hmm there are tests for that I think so if you have a small reproducible case where used versions (used in dependencies!) are removed then I’d be interested in that.

Versions that are used like in the example, not used in any dependency, will always need a keep configuration. You don’t need to keep all versions in recent versions of the plugin, you can specify exactly which one to keep using config or # @keep as a comment above the version you want to keep, see the readme for details on that.