Install mill with Homebrew

Project links

• Homepage

Commands and aliases

• mill

Project history

The tool began in the Scala build-tool world, but its scope widened into a general build tool for Java, Scala, Kotlin, and other platforms. The Mill documentation positions it against Maven, Gradle, and SBT: smaller declarative build files than Maven, object-oriented programmable builds rather than Gradle or SBT-style complexity, and faster JVM workflows through caching, parallelism, and a long-lived daemon. A 2025 Mill 1.0.0 release post framed that version as a breaking release intended to set a stable technical foundation, with build files written in Scala 3 and Java, Scala, and Kotlin support highlighted in the surrounding release discussion.

How it is used

In practice, developers use Mill from the `mill` CLI, with project-local bootstrap scripts, `build.mill` or `build.mill.yaml` build definitions, dependency management, testing, packaging, publishing, and IDE import. Its ecosystem role is closest to Maven, Gradle, and SBT, but it appeals especially to Scala and JVM teams that want build logic expressed as ordinary Scala-like code with aggressive incremental evaluation. The official docs cite real-world use in projects such as C3P0, Coursier, Ammonite, SpinalHDL, Chisel, and work at Netflix and Disney Streaming.

Sources

• https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/mill
• https://github.com/com-lihaoyi/mill
• https://index.scala-lang.org/com-lihaoyi/mill/artifacts/mill-scalaworker/0.1.0
• https://mill-build.org/blog/13-mill-build-tool-v1-0-0.html
• https://mill-build.org/mill/cli/installation-ide.html
• https://mill-build.org/mill/index.html
• https://users.scala-lang.org/t/mill-your-shiny-new-scala-build-tool/2333