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 and Scala IDE.
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 in experimental status, with a pre-stable release of "1.0.0-X10". Over the next weeks, the Zinc team will work on getting Zinc 1.0 production-ready so that build tools and Scala developers alike can benefit from these improvements in a stable way.
If you're a build tool author, add it to your project with:
libraryDependencies += "org.scala-sbt" %% "zinc" % "1.0.0-X10"If you're a Scala developer that wants to try Zinc 1.0, please head to the installation guide of the sbt 0.13.13 plugin sbt-zinc that enables you to use Zinc 1.0 in any 0.13.x sbt installation.
This project is maintained by Lightbend and often receives non-trivial contributions from the Scala Center and several other OSS contributors.
You're very welcome to contribute to this repository as Zinc is currently under active development. For information on how to contribute, please check the CONTRIBUTING guide.
This software is released under the following LICENSE.