@jvican This is great news! I am already subscribed to a few tickets regarding build tool integrations with bloop (therefore I recognize you 
), but despite that I wasn’t aware of this progress. I wonder if we could improve the process of updating users about these endeavors in a centralized location. I believe this topic was discussed a bit as part of the discussion on the preliminary developer survey results.
I wonder if there’s a connection between Bloop and the SBT server @eed3si9n and Josh Suereth were talking about in their talk from 2015? Is the so called “server” is in fact Zinc? The talk presented the server project as a very interesting one, and is quite a good talk overall! It’s one of the few I actually enjoyed watching in (close to) normal speed.
In no way I am trying to claim that incremental compilation was not an integral part of SBT, but rather that it is no longer has to be. Identifying and removing task execution redundancy is and will ever be an integral part of SBT, but that is a different feature than incremental compulation, and in my opinion could be separated from the core build tool. It is obviously a part of the build process – much like the compiler is – but I’d rather see it as an external component.
As for testOnly and other build tasks related to tests, AFAIK there are similar alternatives in other build tools, and indeed I wonder if there’s a necessity for Scala’s own test frameworks. I very much agree with the notions described in Li Haoyi’s blog post regarding essential testing and his utest framework.
Moreover, glancing at SBT’s current status, it seems to be lacking a few major test related features in comparison with the other tools. It seems to be falling behind the other tools on other aspects as well, and especially in popularity, community size and the scope of contribution (I’ve described this in more details in the Scala Users topic).
But then again, I am not denying the importance of SBT and the major part it took in Scala’s history, nor am I requesting for its development to stop - as long as it gives purpose and enjoyment to its developers and contributors, they should keep on with their work and efforts.
What I am asking is whether this should be considered the major build tool for Scala. Should we aspire to see it used in the leading Scala projects? Should we recommend it to Scala newcomers (from Java or not) over other tools? if so, why?
I believe these questions should be addressed publicly and presented formally on SBT’s website.