sbt
Shares rank 16 of 17 build systems by recommenders
Free Scala build tool that people praise for fewer footguns since 1.0 and for standardizing builds, though many find it complex, unpleasant and prone to breaking builds.
Free Scala build tool that people praise for fewer footguns since 1.0 and for standardizing builds, though many find it complex, unpleasant and prone to breaking builds.
16 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 5
- criticize it
- 11
- approval share
- 31%
Recommended in 6 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 5 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 0.4 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 6 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Improved since the 1.0 release
“sbt has improved a lot, the DX is mostly fine since the 1.0 release”
Comment from 30 Nov 2025 in “The Origins of Scala (2009)” “SBT cleared a lot of footguns in the last decade or so”
Comment from 19 Oct 2026 in “Java sealed classes and exhaustive pattern matching” Preferred over other JVM build tools
“I'd pick sbt over these two without thinking, even for pure Java projects.”
Comment from 1 Dec 2025 in “The Origins of Scala (2009)” “sbt is not the biggest offender there”
Comment from 30 Nov 2025 in “The Origins of Scala (2009)”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Unpleasant to work with
“any time I get back to a repo that has that instead of gradle or sbt I'm much happier”
Comment from 28 May 2026 in “Gradle Is Javamaxxing” “dealing with sbt left a horrible taste in my mouth”
Comment from 30 Nov 2025 in “The Origins of Scala (2009)” “I can't even describe how much I dislike SBT.”
Comment from 11 Jul 2026 in “Scarf has moved away from Haskell” - Comment from 20 Mar 2026 in “Java Is Fast. Your Code Might Not Be”
- Comment from 28 May 2026 in “Gradle Is Javamaxxing”
Complex and hard to learn
“sbt harmed adoption in the first place and continued to represent a barrier to Scala's adoption for years”
Comment from 1 Dec 2025 in “The Origins of Scala (2009)” “sbt being one of the first things you deal with when learning the language didn't help.”
Comment from 18 Oct 2026 in “Java sealed classes and exhaustive pattern matching” “sbt got too complex for it's own good”
Comment from 15 Sep 2026 in “Java 27” Breaks builds and deprecations
“somebody has to maintain your builds, and handle all those fun deprecations”
Comment from 1 Dec 2025 in “The Origins of Scala (2009)” “sbt breaking our builds every six months or so has become quite tiresome”
Comment from 19 Oct 2026 in “Java sealed classes and exhaustive pattern matching”
Other build systems people recommend
The four most recommended other build systems, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bazel | 79 | 41 | 66% | 12 | 3 yrs3 owners | — |
| GNU Make | 76 | 42 | 64% | 12 | — | — |
| CMake | 58 | 93 | 38% | 12 | — | — |
| Apache Maven | 44 | 42 | 51% | 12 | — | — |
| sbtThis page | 5 | 11 | 31% | 6 | — | — |
What people said
21 of the 24 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“sbt breaking our builds every six months or so has become quite tiresome”
“SBT cleared a lot of footguns in the last decade or so”
“sbt being one of the first things you deal with when learning the language didn't help.”
“sbt got too complex for it's own good”
“The biggest problems with scala were compiler and sbt performance”
“I can't even describe how much I dislike SBT.”
“It’s the bane of my existence.”
“any time I get back to a repo that has that instead of gradle or sbt I'm much happier”
“"sbt --client" is really fast for me”
“I know them quite well, unfortunately.”
“maven/gradle/sbt suck to work with”
“Happy to see investment in sbt and the stdlib”
“Write your own build tool, dammit.”
“somebody has to maintain your builds, and handle all those fun deprecations”
“I'd pick sbt over these two without thinking, even for pure Java projects.”
“another arena where sbt was considered less fit for the job”
“Sbt plugins are in fact a good way to standardize builds in a corporate setting.”
“sbt harmed adoption in the first place and continued to represent a barrier to Scala's adoption for years”
“sbt is not the biggest offender there”
“sbt has improved a lot, the DX is mostly fine since the 1.0 release”
“dealing with sbt left a horrible taste in my mouth”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.