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Top 4 Scala Build Tool Projects
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After spending one day or two reading documents and many frustrated attempts to fix the issue, I ended up arriving at this Github - Spurious recompilation in multi-project build This was not the fix itself, however, gave me light by the end of the tunnel to understand the problem was indeed with the multi project setup.
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InfluxDB
InfluxDB – Built for High-Performance Time Series Workloads. InfluxDB 3 OSS is now GA. Transform, enrich, and act on time series data directly in the database. Automate critical tasks and eliminate the need to move data externally. Download now.
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Mill
Mill is a fast JVM build tool that supports Java, Scala, Kotlin and many other languages. 3-6x faster than Maven or Gradle for common workflows, Mill aims to make your project’s build process performant, maintainable, and flexible
Working on my Mill build tool, aiming to bring a modern developer experience to the JVM ecosystem:
- https://mill-build.org
Build tools are generally an un-sexy field, and JVM build tools perhaps doubly so. But Mill demonstrates that with some thought put into the design and architecture, we can speed up JVM development workflows by 3-6x over traditional JVM tools like Maven or Gradle, and make it subjectively much easier to navigate in IDEs and extend with custom logic.
If you're passionate about developer experience and work on the JVM, I encourage you to give Mill a try!
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build-server-protocol
Protocol for IDEs and build tools to communicate about compile, run, test, debug and more.
Project mention: Show HN: Gradle plugin for up to 20x faster Java compiles | news.ycombinator.com | 2025-06-03I work professionally in Python these days, but I've just spent a bit of time digging into the contemporary situation because the JVM environment is much more interesting to me, and found this spec: https://build-server-protocol.github.io
Seems the Scala guys have doubled down on the "compiler as a service" approach, presumably because their compile time story continues to be painful. But also looks like the same solution is used for the VS Code Java/Gradle integration, so seems like this might be the more conventional way to go for traditional JVM projects.
For processes where the JIT takes a while to kick in, but also you don't want to waste memory keeping JVMs alive while not doing anything (and compilation could be a good example of that), I wondered if there could be a way to snapshot and restore the JVM state and turns out some people are experimenting with that too: https://openjdk.org/projects/crac/
It's all neat stuff!
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NOTE:
The open source projects on this list are ordered by number of github stars.
The number of mentions indicates repo mentiontions in the last 12 Months or
since we started tracking (Dec 2020).
Scala Build Tool discussion
Scala Build Tool related posts
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The next generation of Bazel builds
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Scala 3 Migration: Report from the Field
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The thousand dollars one line mistake - SBT + PlayFramework
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Mill project structure
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Øyvind Berg and John De Goes discuss Bleep, the new config-as-data build tool
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Version 0.11.0 of the Mill Scala Build Tool is out
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Scala Center Roadmap for 2023 and Beyond
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A note from our sponsor - SaaSHub
www.saashub.com | 25 Jun 2025
Index
What are some of the best open-source Build Tool projects in Scala? This list will help you:
| # | Project | Stars |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | sbt | 4,847 |
| 2 | Mill | 2,457 |
| 3 | build-server-protocol | 493 |
| 4 | seed | 237 |
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