July 30, 2014

up and running with scala

The "Getting started" section of the "Functional Programming with Scala" course mentions using Eclipse to build the first 'hello world' kind of project, but if you'd rather not get out of your Emacs comfort zone, there is a different way to do the same (credits to numerous online sources).

Install sbt (sudo apt-get install sbt) and scala (download from here)

Install the ensime plugin for sbt: Create a directory ~/.sbt/0.13/plugins, and create plugins.sbt


resolvers += "Sonatype releases" at "https://oss.sonatype.org/content/repositories/releases"

addSbtPlugin("org.ensime" % "ensime-sbt-cmd" % "0.1.2")

Install the scala-mode2 Emacs: if you have Emacs24, this is as straightforward as running M-x package-list-packages and finding it)

Install ensime: Download the latest .tar.gz, and install it somewhere under .emacs.d, then modify your .emacs to load the appropriate paths:


(add-to-list 'load-path "~/.emacs.d/ensime/elisp")

(require 'ensime)

(add-hook 'scala-mode-hook 'ensime-scala-mode-hook)

Create a new directory: mkdir helloworld; cd helloworld

Initialize the project: Create build.sbt with the following


name := "hello_world"

version := "1.0"

Set up ensime: sbt ensime generate

Open a file (say) Main.scala

Start ensime in Emacs: M-x ensime (say 'yes' to various prompts). You should see something like "ENSIME ready. May the _ be with you." in the minibuffer.

Add something in the file, e.g. (copying from the tutorial)


package greeter



object Hello extends App {

  println("Hello World")

}

Hit C-c C-b v, this brings up an sbt console inside Emacs (similar to how Slime works with Lisp)

Type run in the console, you should see something like


> run

[info] Compiling 1 Scala source to /home/agam/Scala/hello-world/target/scala-2.10/classes...

[info] Running greeter.Hello 

Hello World

[success] Total time: 2 s, completed Jul 30, 2014 5:03:35 PM

... and that's it!

Tags: old-post

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