Mill: A Better Build Tool for Java, Scala, & Kotlin

Re:Mill: A Better Build Tool for Java, Scala, & Kotlin by switchbak on Wednesday July 16, 2025 @03:05PM (#44585732)

I've had the misfortune of having Maven forced on me for Scala projects, I just can't agree with you. The overhead of starting the compiler so often is a killer, and makes your builds much slower. Unless there's been some improvement of Zinc/Bloop/Etc with Maven since I've used it.

I think I would prefer to use Mill than Maven (I haven't used Mill myself) ... going through the video tutorial, it's clear that it's also a very simple system without some of the ancient baggage of Maven (xml, too many plugins, etc).

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Re:Mill: A Better Build Tool for Java, Scala, & Kotlin by vips7L on Wednesday July 16, 2025 @05:13PM (#44586842)

I’ve had sbt and scala forced upon me for Java projects and I feel the exact opposite of you!

Sbt and Scalac are so slow they kill any productivity I could have.

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Re:Mill: A Better Build Tool for Java, Scala, & Kotlin by ackfoobar on Wednesday July 16, 2025 @08:19PM (#44588342)

I don't think "Scala+Maven is worse than Scala+sbt" is opposite to "Scala+sbt is worse than Java+Maven".

As much as I like to hate Scala, in my past experience if you have sbt console open, then hit compile after every few changes the feedback loop is tight-ish - barring crazy Scala features being used.

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Re:Mill: A Better Build Tool for Java, Scala, & Kotlin by vips7L on Thursday July 17, 2025 @11:17AM (#44594312)

You've misunderstood. sbt+Scala (as a build tool) + Java is the opposite of Scala+Maven.

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Re:Mill: A Better Build Tool for Java, Scala, & Kotlin by ackfoobar on Thursday July 17, 2025 @12:25PM (#44595049)

I see. I thought you were forced to write Scala in your application code, because sbt already implies writing Scala to describe the build.

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Re:Mill: A Better Build Tool for Java, Scala, & Kotlin by vips7L on Thursday July 17, 2025 @08:01PM (#44599706)

Sorry for the ambiguity. I have also had to write Scala in application code for those projects, but that's because the framework we used, Play, is written in Scala and it's Scala core leaks in many places where the Java compiler can't figure out the kludge of byte code generated by scalac.

I actually rather enjoy Scala as a language when I don't have to interact with it from Java and when I don't have to go full into the FP ZIO/Cats world.

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Re:Mill: A Better Build Tool for Java, Scala, & Kotlin by switchbak on Monday July 21, 2025 @11:47PM (#44643049)

Agreed, I don’t think I’d ever choose SBT as a build tool unless I had to.

Also agree on the FP side. It seems compelling at first, but good lord I don’t think it’s worth all the trouble.

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Re:Mill: A Better Build Tool for Java, Scala, & Kotlin by ackfoobar on Tuesday July 22, 2025 @01:41PM (#44650589)

>> FP ZIO/Cats world

> I don’t think it’s worth all the trouble

Once you see the bijection between imperative programming and imperative programming in a monad, you'll be angry for all the wasted hours.

Then again, you'll be able to understand this satire piece, so who's to say if the time was wasted.

http://conal.net/blog/posts/the-c-language-is-purely-functio...

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