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jackcviers3 | 1 year ago

It's intended as a replacement for _scala_ builds. Having a build definition in the native language that doesn't require a different syntax (like a declarative syntax such as maven xml or toml) makes task customization easier for the maintainer of a given project. Unfortunately, it also means that you have to know the language and read the documentation for the build system.

If you want something declarative, there's also bleep[1] in the scala ecosystem. And for single module builds there's scala-cli[2]. It's also possible to use gradle and maven for scala projects, but for an java-only shop I wouldn't be using mill or bleep because there's no need to introduce a new language just to manage the build. For scala/java/kotlin hybrid projects though, gradle or mill or sbt would be my recommended tool because of how tightly they are coupled with the cross-platform build matrix nature of scala library and build system plugin ecosystems. For larger builds, it's mill or bazel because there s a performance cliff in sbt and gradle, and bleep is too new to have all the standard plugins ported. We use mill at writer.

1. https://bleep.build/docs/

2. https://scala-cli.virtuslab.org/

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lihaoyi|1 year ago

The intention has changed, Mill now explicity targets Java and Kotlin as well. It now has dedicated Java/Kotlin docsite sections and examples, and has grown integrations with Palantir-Format, Checkstyle, Errorprone, Jacoco, and all their Kotlin equivalents (ktfmt, ktlint, kover).

Java and Scala (and Kotlin) are remarkably similar from a tooling perspective, so Mill tries to target both using the same shared infrastructure

carrotsalad|1 year ago

> It's intended as a replacement for _scala_ builds. Having a build definition in the native language [...] makes task customization easier for the maintainer

Totally agree! But the title of the post says "Mill: A fast JVM build tool for Java and Scala" :) - it certainly looks like better tool for the Scala community.

For projects that are primarily building Java sources, it'd be nice to have a build system that uses Java code to describe the build. I don't think this exists at the moment.