Re:Scala 2.10 now available
by LiveTheDream on Friday January 04, 2013 @01:20PM
(#5008900)
Actually, the IntelliJ team does not use Zinc. Their compilation subsystem is basically an equivalent re-implementation of Zinc.
The reason they built their own is because they need more data about the compilation process than Zinc provides.
That is partially correct. Intellij doesn't use zinc, but it uses the same compilation system that is at the heart of zinc. From http://blog.jetbrains.com/scala/, there is a section showing how their new system relates to zinc.
It would have been more accurate for me to say that this release the Scala team developed an SBT incremental compiler that is used by Eclipse, Maven, and, most recently, IntelliJ.
Re:Scala 2.10 now available
by PommeDeTerre on Friday January 04, 2013 @08:30PM
(#5010959)
Performance problems like these early on in a product's adoption (yes, I know Scala isn't exactly new, but it still isn't widely used) can really give it a bad reputation that is extremely hard to shake.
I hope that they don't fall into the trap that the Mozilla folk have with Firefox. Although Firefox is still slow, it isn't as bad as it once was. Even after substantial effort and some moderate improvements, it still has a very bad reputation. I don't think it'll ever overcome this.
The same could easily happen to Scala, if they aren't careful.
The Scala team knows compilation speed is important; they have dedicated people working on it full time. This release they made progress by creating an incremental compilation system called Zinc that is shared by Eclipse, maven, and most recently, IntelliJ. They have also said that there is no easy fix on the horizon. Improvements will take time and likely continue to be incremental in the near future.