In short, to my knowledge, no, SBT can not “fail fast” on a compiler or test error.

To my knowledge SBT doesn’t control this. SBT is just going to invoke the appropriate test framework when it inspects your unit tests. The test framework can then decide what order to run the tests in, to run them concurrently, how to report issues, etc. Of course each test framework has its own features, configuration, and conventions. The two most widely used test frameworks for Scala are ScalaTest and Specs2.

Fortunately you can get the behavior you’ve requested in either Specs2 or ScalaTest. I’ve provided simple unit test examples below that fail early.

ScalaTest

You can get fail-fast behavior in ScalaTest for single test Suites by mixing in the CancelAfterFailure trait. For example, this test would execute the first test, fail the second, and show the third as cancelled.

class SomeSuite extends FunSuite with CancelAfterFailure with Assertions {

  test("first") {
    println("first")
  }

  test("second") {
    assert(false)
  }

  test("third") {
    println("third")
  }
}

Specs2

Similar to ScalaTest you can control behavior in Specs2 on a per-Specification basis. To get fail-fast-like behavior you need to add two Arguments to your Specification: sequential and stopOnFail. See the docs for a full list of arguments you can set. (You do need both if you want an obvious linear ordering since Specs2 by default will execute your tests concurrently!)

class SomeSpec extends Specification {

  sequential
  stopOnFail

  "specs2" should {
    "first" in {
      println("first")
      ok
    }

    "second" in {
      "foo" must equalTo ("bar")
    }

    "third" in {
      println("third")
    }
  }
}