Zinc is the incremental compiler for Scala. Most Scala developers use it daily without noticing -- it's embedded in key build tools like sbt, CBT and pants.
The primary goal of Zinc is to make your compilation times faster without sacrificing correctness. When you change a source file, Zinc analyses the dependencies of your code and compiles the minimum subset of source files affected by your change. The generated code should be identical to the output of a clean compile.
Originally this was project was part of sbt, referred to as the incremental compiler module of sbt.
To allow for build tools outside of sbt to use it, the project typesafehub/zinc was created to re-export the whole of sbt to utilise the incremental compiler module.
With the effort for sbt 1, the sbt team extracted the incremental compiler from the sbt repo, to the sbt/zinc repo, recycling the name "zinc".
This new repository is an effort driven by Lightbend to allow any build tool use the Scala incremental compiler, as sbt 1.0, pants, cbt, Intellij, Scala IDE and Maven Plugin.
The Zinc 1.0 incremental compiler implements significant improvements over 0.13.13's version when it comes to performance, correctness and dependency analysis.
Zinc 1.0 is already in use in many tools in the Scala ecosystem like sbt, Bloop, Pants and Maven. If you want to create your own integration, you have two options:
- Interface directly with Zinc APIs and maintain your own integration.
- Use Bloop (which has a compilation server that simplifies tooling integrations).
If you're a build tool author, add it to your project with:
libraryDependencies += "org.scala-sbt" %% "zinc" % "$ZINC_VERSION"where $ZINC_VERSION is the latest tag pushed to the GitHub repository.
This project is maintained by Lightbend, the Scala Center and other OSS contributors.
You're welcome to contribute to this repository. For information on how to contribute, please check the CONTRIBUTING guide.
This software is released under the following LICENSE.
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We thank Yourkit for supporting this open-source project with its full-featured profiler. |