SE Radio 231: Joshua Suereth and Matthew Farwell on SBT and Software Builds

Joshua Suereth and Matthew Farwell discuss SBT (Simple Build Tool) and their new book SBT in Action. They first look at the factors creating a need for build systems and why they think SBT—a new addition to this area—is a valuable contribution in spite of the vast number of existing build tools. Host Tobias Kaatz, Joshua, and Matthew then discuss how parallel execution of highly customizable tasks can both solve complex build problems and cause issues for programmers who aren't used to working in such an environment. The remainder of the show covers dependency management, and especially the influence of Apache Ivy. The host and guests compare SBT to other build systems (Ant, Maven and Gradle) and examine how SBT deals with external libraries and why a new approach using Aether might be the best way to go.