[eeperson]

SBT actually only requires 2 configuration files (even for multi-project builds). One for SBT plugins and one for everything else. You can use more files for organizational purposes but they are not necessary.

I actually like 'directory of configuration'. The SBT build configuration is actually an SBT project itself. So you can use a lot of the same tools to trouble shoot the build configuration that you would use to troubleshoot the build itself. Also, this means that in some cases (such as multi-project builds) you can use much fewer files.

I'm not sure about CI compatibility. I know that Jenkins/Hudson have SBT support but I have never tried to use it.

I actually think that way that most IDEs interact with maven builds is less complete than what you have with SBT. For example, frequently you need specify your build configuration again if you want your IDE to do incremental compilation or to run individual tests. This can be very painful if your build contains anything out of the ordinary. With SBT you just attach a remote debugger to a long running SBT process and then let SBT due all of the building and running. It takes care of the automatic incremental compilation and lets you run individual tests (which, unlike most IDEs, it can be configured to run tests automatically and it can probably run them much faster).

I can certainly understand if the previous 0.7 to 0.10 jump made you nervous about SBT. However, I think that SBT has matured a lot in the year and a half since then. I think it has finally reached a stability point where it is ready for general use. In particular I think the 0.12.x series is where this finally occurred. It has now has a steady release process and has fixed issues that SBT (along with Scala the language) had, in the past, with binary compatibility.

EDIT: lost a bunch of text in the submit, had to retype