Actually, the IntelliJ team does not use Zinc. Their compilation subsystem is basically an equivalent re-implementation of Zinc.
The reason they built their own is because they need more data about the compilation process than Zinc provides.
The reason they built their own is because they need more data about the compilation process than Zinc provides.
It would have been more accurate for me to say that this release the Scala team developed an SBT incremental compiler that is used by Eclipse, Maven, and, most recently, IntelliJ.