Talk:Sbt (software)

Bias in criticism section?

I was a bit surprised by the criticism section and the comparison to Maven. Much is made of points that are not really relevant to a comparison between the tools as they are today, such as the break in compatibility several years ago and the lack of documentation at the time ("SBT in Action" came out later as well). SBT is called cryptic and Maven's XML is held up as a shining alternative, when in fact many consider reading XML quite onerous and Scala's much less encumbered notation cleaner once you know what the operators mean. Nothing is said of the fact that those Maven XML declarations are far, far less expressive than Scala code. (Are any of those Maven plugins necessary because of that lack of expressive power?) If those many more Maven plugins truly represent a serious gap in SBT's capabilities, how about listing two or three of the most egregious examples of missing SBT plugins? And nothing is said at all of SBT's integration with popular Scala testing frameworks, its recursive nature, the ability to easily launch the REPL with the compiled classes on the classpath, or the capabilities of the many plugins that *are* available. No explanation is offered for why SBT came to be the de facto build tool for Scala in spite of its implied inferiority to Maven. And Coda Hale had an emotional, public falling out with the Scala folks; is he a good source for this article or any other on the Scala ecosystem?

SBT is not perfect, but this comparison makes it sound like you'd be silly to use SBT instead of writing XML for Maven, and I wonder whether the section is up to Wikipedia's standards for unbiased content. — Preceding unsigned comment added by AmigoNico (talk • contribs) 08:17, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

Source

SBT was featured in episode 231 of podcast Software Engineering Radio. --Mortense (talk) 20:33, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

Requested move 31 January 2017

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: No consensus among the various possible moves discussed. (non-admin closure) Dicklyon (talk) 04:12, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

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Sbt (software) → sbt – Looks like the parenthetical disambiguation here is unnecessary. There are no other "sbt" topics in Wikipedia. Codename Lisa (talk) 07:30, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

This is a contested technical request (permalink). Anthony Appleyard (talk) 08:57, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

• @Codename Lisa: But SBT has plenty meanings. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 08:57, 31 January 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose it isn't clear that "sbt" in small case is distinctive, or unique to SBT (software). But more of an issue: not sure why this is at "sbt" when Google Books show "SBT" is more normal. In ictu oculi (talk) 16:24, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

On further thought propose move back to SBT (software) per WP:MOSTM this is a stylism not supported in third party WP:RS. In ictu oculi (talk) 09:31, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose per In ictu oculi. The three letters are pronounced individually, right? Or do we need to make a xkcd-like exception? feminist 15:10, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

@Feminist: What's the xkcd-like exception? dwijnand (talk) 15:56, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

• Support per nom. Since there is no other use of sbt (all lowercase), this is also WP:NATURALDISAMBIGUATION. Plenty of other examples using lower case, like ls, vi, iPhone, eBay, that last of which is referenced at WP:MOS, so IIO's opposition makes no sense; it's not based in policy, guidelines or usage. --В²C ☎ 00:54, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The meaning of sbt

Note that while the full name of sbt (Simple Build Tool) is difficult to find in the official website, it can be found in the source code of sbt.

Examples:

• http://www.scala-sbt.org/0.13.15/sxr/sbt/SelectMainClass.scala.html
• https://github.com/sbt/sbt/blob/0.13/sbt/src/main/scala/package.scala — Preceding unsigned comment added by LordofPens (talk • contribs) 16:38, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

The update to the 2023 state

The last significant update to this page was in 2017. A lot has changed since then. I'm involved in the development of Scala tooling, of which sbt is a part, so I've conducted research on sbt features, its history, and how it compares to other build tools today. This led me to decide to write a major update. I understand that on Wikipedia the favored approach is to make consecutive small edits, especially when they come from a new editor. However, in this case, I thought that might be a bit dishonest: I've already written a document with all the changes I want to make, and it's been reviewed by my colleagues from the Scala tooling working group. Splitting the changes into a series of small updates would feel artificial and might come across as a sneaky way to avoid criticism.

Actually, I'd like to invite everyone who is interested in sbt to share their thoughts. I tried to be as objective as I can, but since I'm involved in the Scala community, I'm inevitably biased. If you find anything questionable, please edit, or let me know. I will be keeping an eye on this page. Makingthematrix (talk) 09:52, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

LGTM! SethTisue (talk) 22:02, 16 June 2023 (UTC)