As it currently stands, this question is not a good fit for our Q&A format. We expect answers to be supported by facts, references, or expertise, but this question will likely solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion. If you feel that this question can be improved and possibly reopened, visit the help center for guidance.
Closed 10 years ago.
Which build tool is the best for Scala? What are the pros and cons of each of them? How to I determine which one of them to use in a project?
We're using Maven to build Scala projects at work because it integrates well with our CI server. We could just run a shell script to kick off a build, of course, but we've got a bunch of other information coming out of Maven that we want to go into CI. That's about the only reason I can think of to use Maven for a Scala project.
Otherwise, just use SBT. You get access to the same dependencies (really the best part about maven, IMHO). You also get the incremental compilation, which is huge. The ability to start up a shell inside of your project, which is also great.
ScalaMock only works with SBT, and you're probably going to want to use that rather than a Java mocking library. On top of that, it's much easier to extend SBT since you can write full scala code in the build file, so you don't have to go through all the rigamarole of writing a Mojo.
In short, just use SBT unless you really need tight integration into your CI server.
The question is in danger of just generating lots of opinions; it would be better to have a clear list of requirements or a description of your environment, previous knowledge, etc.
FWIW, there are more opinions in this scala mailing list thread.
My 2c are: Go with sbt if you don't have specific requirements
for simple projects, it's totally effortless (you don't even need a build file until you have dependencies)
it is commonly used across Scala open source projects. You can easily learn about configuration by peeking into other people's projects. Plus many projects assume you use sbt and provide you with ready-made copy+paste instruction for adding them as a dependency to your project.
if you use IntelliJ IDEA, it can be totally integrated. You can have IDEA use sbt to continuously compile your project, and vice versa you can use sbt to quickly generate IDEA projects. The last is extremely useful if you are in a 'snapshot' cycle with depending on other of your own libraries which are bumped from minor version to minor version -- just close the project, update the version in the build file, re-run the gen-idea task, and re-open the project: updates done.
comes ready with most tasks you will need (compile, test, run, doc, publish-local, console) -- the console is one of the best features.
some people highlight the feature that dependencies can be source repositories directly grabbed from GitHub. I haven't used this so can't comment here.
Some people hate sbt because it uses Ivy for dependency management (I can't comment on its pros and cons, but most of the time it is a non-issue), some people hate sbt because you specify the build file in terms of a Scala DSL instead of XML. Some people were disappointed that sbt's format changed from v0.7 to v0.10, but obviously, migration won't affect you if you start from scratch.
Related
As it currently stands, this question is not a good fit for our Q&A format. We expect answers to be supported by facts, references, or expertise, but this question will likely solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion. If you feel that this question can be improved and possibly reopened, visit the help center for guidance.
Closed 10 years ago.
I search a code coverage plugin for eclipse.
My question is simple:
Which plugin do you use with eclipse for code coverage and why ?
Edit (2015) - My current recommendation: EclEmma / JaCoCo.
Not sure why I didn't see this back in January 2012, as there was clearly active development with new versions consistently being reproduced even back then.
I've since become a bit frustrated with Cobertura / eCobertura, as development since seems to have stalled, with support for current Java versions starting to be somewhat lacking.
JaCoCo may have advanced since I last looked at this in 2012 (or I simply missed it entirely, or was looking at EMMA vs. JaCoCo) - but the current version provides excellent support built-in to Eclipse (provided by EclEmma) as well as many other IDEs, support for Apache Maven, Apache Ant, command-line, Java API, and many other third-party integrations. Please refer to the complete list at http://www.eclemma.org/jacoco/trunk/doc/integrations.html .
I am now switching some of my projects over to JaCoCo from Cobertura, and am very impressed by the integration and results - both in Maven reports as well as Eclipse. Not sure about competing solutions, but JaCoCo can even be configured to fail a build if certain thresholds of code coverage are not met.
JaCoCo is specifically documented to support Java class files from version 1.0 all the way through 1.8*.
I find their Mission Statement very respect-worthy.
References / Resources:
Especially as this question has unfortunately been closed, here is a mini-directory of some of the various references and resources that I used in making my decision - and which I encourage everyone here to refer to in order to make their own decisions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_Code_Coverage_Tools - by Wikipedia's nature is more of a "living document", and will hopefully remain updated with any new related tools that may become available.
The following should also somewhat fall into the same category of a "living document", but fall under probable bias / conflicts of interest - as each is from the vendor or organization that also produces such a tool:
http://www.eclemma.org/resources.html (Provides EclEmma, JaCoCo)
https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/CLOVER/Comparison+of+code+coverage+tools (Provides Atlassian Clover)
Presumably independent but dated reviews and comparisons:
Code Coverage Tools (JaCoCo, Cobertura, Emma) Comparison in Sonar (2012-12-19, Patroklos Papapetrou, onlysoftware.wordpress.com)
Eclipse plugin for code coverage (2012-01-28, stackoverflow.com)
Test coverage: jaCoCo vs Clover2 (Jakub Kurlenda, 2010-12-28, kurlenda.blogspot.com)
Java Code Coverage: Cobertura vs. Emma vs Clover (Tom Borthwick, 2010-10-23, copperykeenclaws.com)
Pick your code coverage tool in Sonar 2.2 (2010-08-05, Evgeny Mandrikov, sonarqube.org)
In pursuit of code quality: Don't be fooled by the coverage report (Andrew Glover, 2006-01-31, ibm.com)
Previous:
eCobertura.
It does the job, it is free and open-source, it is more up-to-date than EMMA, and it is used by most of the other online open-source projects I'm familiar with. It also integrates very well into Maven - including some rather nice-looking reports.
If you want to consider a commercial product, I'd consider Atlassian's Clover.
I like http://codecover.org/
The source highlighting is better than eCobertura, the drill-down is easy to read, selecting test cases is easy, it actually provides statistics for statement, branch, loop and condition coverage ( a lot of plugins only do statement, which is kinda useless ).
We use it at our business and we found it the best plugin by far.
Coverlipse: http://coverlipse.sourceforge.net/ because it's free
As it currently stands, this question is not a good fit for our Q&A format. We expect answers to be supported by facts, references, or expertise, but this question will likely solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion. If you feel that this question can be improved and possibly reopened, visit the help center for guidance.
Closed 10 years ago.
I am looking for a good editor for a Symfony2 project and other projects. I really don't need the fancyness or thousands of scripts loading, etc. I personally prefer easy and clean structured IDE - that's why I actually always tend to close Eclipse.
I am running Mamp on a Macbook with OS X Lion.
Currently I always go back to Komodo. So my question is: What are the advantages of having Symfony support in Eclipse and Netbeans (I actually tried both)?
I don't mind editing and going back and forth between the editor and the browser. I never really understood why there needs to be a huge application for that. I just can't see any advantages other than the code intelligence, and integrated subversion tools in the editors. Can anybody agree on that?
I use NetBeans too which works well even with Symfony 2. You don't need to set anything, just create a new PHP project from existing Symfony folder. You'll get autocomplete for classes and validation check for YAML (if you use it, of course).
For Twig you can install this plugin which gives you syntax highlight and nothing more. This is enough for me. The only problem I found is that Twig templates are hard to read if you use some dark (and cool) NetBeans theme: you should use default black on white one.
I don't recommend Eclipse even with Symfony2 plugin: works really bad and it takes minutes to install. The only good feature (I can't get in NetBeans) is custom commands for generating entities, install assets and so on.
I use NetBeans for all my PHP projects, including symfony 1.x stuff. I used to use Eclipse but found that auto-complete would hang from time to time - though they may have fixed that. Both are memory hungry and seem to hang onto RAM increasingly over time, hence both need restarts periodically if you are in the habit of sleeping your machine rather than turning it off.
The autocompletion is pretty good in NetBeans, anyway, so I've stuck with it. I agree on your assessment of framework support in IDEs generally - it may be nice to have, but I'm happy with the CLI.
#Mike i've been working on a symfony plugin for eclipse, it's available here: http://symfony.dubture.com/
Following is a question that is posted on http://dev.eclipse.org in April 2003. The original question is:
Hi all,
in eclipse i have created several java
projects representing different
modules for one web application. i'd
like to configure one output folder
for all of these projects. Any time i
build a subproject the content of the
output folder is deleted, so i loose
the classes of all other subprojects.
I think there must be a switch or
something like that to tell eclipse
not to clear the content of the output
folder when it builds a project - but
i just can't find it.
Thanks for your help!
Alex
I am trying to see if I could get a definitve answer for this question. I have tried to find out to see if this question has already been addressed and I was not able to find any except for the following answer:
Window-->Preferences-->Java-->Compiler-->Build Path
The above answer did not help me much.
Hmm... I think this approach will bring more trouble than it's worth. Sure it's a priori a quick and dirty fix to integrating your projects together but you are only pushing the problem forward. It is good practice to keep your modules as isolated as possible from each-other, trying to merge the compiled code in a single location is working against the way the IDE was designed and will only bring trouble.
I would recommend that you look into maven to build and package your modules. Then referencing them is just a matter of adding a declaration in the project that requires it and you are integrated. Of course you will need to learn it but it provides a good base of conventions that when followed yield almost effortless integration. Plus reusing some modules in another project becomes trivial so you gain in all fronts.
To answer the other question in the thread when they wish to make a tree of related projects it is possible though somewhat clumsy. Eclipse will always present projects as a flat list, however the folders can be arranged in a tree nonetheless. Just specify a custom location when creating a project or import the project from the sub-folder. Again here Maven can help a lot with it's concept of modules.
As eugener mentioned in his comment, there are plugins for maven that will make most of these tasks trivial. You may find all you are looking for just by exploring the gui, this said, reading the maven literature will give you good insight on how it works and what it can do for you.
What Tools do you people use to work with Scala? For my learning phase, I used the Scala REPL and hacked some code with TextMate and compiled it with the scalac CLI. But as the projects grow in size, much more sophisticated tools are required.
I am aware of the Scala plugins for Elipse, IntelliJ and Netbeans and I tried them all. The best one is IMHO IntelliJ, but still far away from being perfect.
The major issue I have is the lack of auto completion. As a not-so-advanced Scala coder, I still dont know the whole standard API and have to switch between the Scaladoc and IDE regularly. This feels like "killing productivity". But they all fail to auto-complete method arguments. (I heard that method arguments are not included in compiled scala code, but what about attaching source to do auto completion?)
Another very annoying issue is the build process. I am using Maven to build my Scala projects and manage their dependencies. But nevertheless, I have to do a full rebuild to test my changes. Maybe I am spoiled by Eclipses incremental rebuild available in the Java world, but it feels like a big issue to me.
I like Scala very much and I feel way more productive while coding, but the lack of sophisticed tools let me feel less productive. And both seem to cancel out themselves.
So, whats my question? I doubt every single Scala programmer uses good ol' vim or emacs along with scalac to do their work. So what tools do you use? What workflows have you developed to bring speed into developing with the Scala language?
Edit
Clarification what I ment with auto-completion of method arguments.
val myList = "foo" :: "all your base" :: Nil
myList.partition(_.length > 3)
For the code above, IntelliJ fail to provide me with the information that partition requires that I have to pass a () => Boolean function. In fact, IntelliJ does not check for this contraint. I can pass a String and IntelliJ will not indicate my error until I do a compile.
scalac
Get familiar with command line options to Scalac.
-deprecation
-Xprint:all: watch your code progress through compiler phases, very useful to see what implicits are applied.
-help / -X' /-Y` list all options.
The latest nightly builds of scalac include a bash completion file that makes these easier to use.
IntelliJ IDEA
Method completion with Javadoc (CTRL-Space, CTRL-Q/Apple-J) Screenshot
Parameter Info for the example in the question (CTRL-P) Screenshot
Method Argument Completion (CTRL-SHIFT-Space). Screenshot
You need to have the source or javadocs linked into the dependencies in IntelliJ to see the Javadoc.
It doesn't currently highlight type errors on the fly, as there are still too many false-positives in complex code. This is coming, though.
Simple Build Tool
SBT keeps the compiler resident, and analyzes dependencies between classes to allow incremental recompilation. It can also monitor for changes to source files and automatically trigger recompilation and/or test execution.
Continous Compilation: >~compile
Continuous Compilation + Test: ~test-quick
I have SBT and IntelliJ project configured in http://github.com/scalaz/scalaz, you could use this as a reference.
I've been using Scala daily for the last six months. I'm still using vim (and ctags to find stuff), and Maven for builds. I've gotten some good mileage out of JRebel when working on Lift web apps -- it will reload changes on the fly without server restarts.
I spent some time looking into IDEs, but it got depressing really fast. I really missed a lot of Eclipse features at first, but after a period of adjustment I don't think I'm significantly less productive now.
I've heard some rumblings that NetBeans is the current champ for Scala IDEs, but I haven't tried it first hand.
One simple way is to use fsc, an offline compiler. It maintains caches of information, and the standard compiler will talk to fsc (running as a daemon) and use its cached information during compilation, thus speeding up your compilation cycle.
Here's my answer on a similar thread. After giving about an hour to Ensime. I just can't help but get the word out. I must say it's very, very well written for an Emacs package.
I am afraid you have to wait for Scala to become rock-solid.
I had exactly the same issue with Java ten years ago. It was even worse.
I also tried them all. For Scala 2.7.7 IntelliJ is the winner, but for Scala 2.8.0-SNAPSHOT Eclipse is not that bad.
Wait half of a year after 2.8.0 is released and check again. It should become bearable.
With Scala 2.8, please see this for getting better performance out of Maven.
You should also give Netbeans 6.8 a try with the nightly Scala build. I am very satisfied programming Scala with this IDE. For building, I sometimes also use Ant. The best thing about NB Scala plugin is that it is fast and code-completion works flawlessly.
For the example you gave: NB gives me this error
code-completion:
The Eclipse Scala IDE is quite mature now (as of 3.0).
Closed. This question is opinion-based. It is not currently accepting answers.
Want to improve this question? Update the question so it can be answered with facts and citations by editing this post.
Closed 8 years ago.
Improve this question
I've seen questions about IDE's here -- Which is the best IDE for Scala development? and What is the current state of tooling for Scala?, but I've had mixed experiences with IDEs. Right now, I'm using the Eclipse IDE with the automatic workspace refresh option, and KDE 4's Kate as my text editor. Here are some of the problems I'd like to solve:
use my own editor IDEs are really geared at everyone using their components. I like Kate better, but the refresh system is very annoying (it doesn't use inotify, rather, maybe a 10s polling interval). The reason I don't use the built-in text editor is because broken auto-complete functionalities cause the IDE to hang for maybe 10s.
rebuild only modified files The Eclipse build system is broken. It doesn't know when to rebuild classes. I find myself almost half of the time going to project->clean. Worse, it seems even after it has finished building my project, a few minutes later it will pop up with some bizarre error (edit - these errors appear to be things that were previously solved with a project > clean, but then come back up...). Finally, setting "Preferences / Continue launch if project contains errors" to "prompt" seems to have no effect for Scala projects (i.e. it always launches even if there are errors).
build customization I can use the "nightly" release, but I'll want to modify and use my own Scala builds, not the compiler that's built into the IDE's plugin. It would also be nice to pass [e.g.] -Xprint:jvm to the compiler (to print out lowered code).
fast compiling Though Eclipse doesn't always build right, it does seem snappy -- even more so than fsc.
I looked at Ant and Maven, though haven't employed either yet (I'll also need to spend time solving #3 and #4). I wanted to see if anyone has other suggestions before I spend time getting a suboptimal build system working. Thanks in advance!
UPDATE - I'm now using Maven, passing a project as a compiler plugin to it. It seems fast enough; I'm not sure what kind of jar caching Maven does. A current repository for Scala 2.8.0 is available [link]. The archetypes are very cool, and cross-platform support seems very good. However, about compile issues, I'm not sure if fsc is actually fixed, or my project is stable enough (e.g. class names aren't changing) -- running it manually doesn't bother me as much. If you'd like to see an example, feel free to browse the pom.xml files I'm using [github].
UPDATE 2 - from benchmarks I've seen, Daniel Spiewak is right that buildr's faster than Maven (and, if one is doing incremental changes, Maven's 10 second latency gets annoying), so if one can craft a compatible build file, then it's probably worth it...
Points 2 and 4 are extremely difficult to manage with the current scalac. The problem is that Scala's compiler is a little dumb about building files. Basically, it will build whatever you feed it, regardless of whether or not that file really needs to be built. Scala 2.8.0 will have some tremendous improvements in this respect, but until then... Eclipse SDT actually has some very elaborate (and very hackish) code for doing change detection and dependency tracking. On the whole, it does a decent job, but as you have seen, there are wrinkles. Eclipse SDT 2.8.0 will rely on the aforementioned improvements to scalac itself.
So, building only modified files is pretty much out of the question. Aside from SDT, the only tool I know of which even tries this is SBT (Simple Build Tool). It uses a compiler plugin to track files as they are compiled and query the dependency graph computed by the compiler itself. In practice, this yields about a 50% improvement over the recompile-the-world approach. Once again, this is a hack to get around deficiencies in pre-2.8.0 scalac.
The good news is that reasonably fast compilation is still achievable even without worrying about change detection. FSC uses the same technology (ooh, that sounded so "Charlie Eppes") that Eclipse SDT uses to implement fast incremental compilation. In short, it's pretty snappy.
Personally, I use Apache Buildr. Its configuration is significantly cleaner than either Maven's or SBT's and its startup time is orders of magnitude less (when running under MRI). It integrates with FSC and attempts to do some basic change detection on its own (fairly primitive). It also has auto-magical support for the major Scala test frameworks (ScalaTest, ScalaCheck and Specs) as well as support for joint compilation with Java sources and IDE meta generation for IntelliJ and Eclipse. Oh, and it supports all of Maven's features (dependency resolution, etc) and then some. I'm even working on an extension which would allow interactive shell support integrated with JavaRebel and supporting several shell providers (Scala, JIRB, Clojure REPL, etc). It's not ready for the SVN yet, but I'll commit once it's ready (possibly in time for 1.3.5).
As you can see, I'm very firmly of the opinion that Buildr is the best Scala build tool out there. Its documentation is a little spotty where Scala is concerned, but that's because everything is so straightforward that it's hard to document without feeling verbose. You can always check out one of my GitHub repositories for examples. Good luck!
Have you looked at Intellij IDEA and its Scala integration ? Intellij has a loyal (fanatical?) following amongst Java developers, so you may find this is appropriate for your needs.
Am also quite frustrated with the scala plugin on Eclipse and I can add a few more problems to the list:
auto-complete only works some of the time
the debugger doesn't work properly (especially when trying to debug scala xml)
the debugger forgets breakpoints
'go to definition' doesn't work more often than not.
I'm glad to hear that Buildr sounds like a better alternative (on the build front anyhow), I'll give that a try - thanks!
If you use Emacs, I think Ensime is a pretty good IDE. I think at the time writing, Ensime is the only IDE that will give you fast and accurate autocompletion on both Scala and Java objects, including implicit conversions.
There's code browsing support using Speedbar, code templates using the excellent Yasnippet, and code completion menu using Autocomplete. These are all very modern, actively maintained Emacs packages. There's also out of the box incremental building support for Maven and SBT.
There's a lot more in there such as interactive debugging, refactoring, and the Scala interpreter in an inferior process. All the things you want in a modern IDE for Scala is already there in Ensime. Highly recommended for Emacsens.
For the reasons of completeness, I have to say that there is also Pants -- the build tool that in use in Twitter (one of the early scala adopters)
The main difference it that it is intended not only for scala (and written in python, by the way) and is modeled after google build system.
It's not so bloated as sbt, so for the freshmans it's much simplier, but I've never heard about Pants usage outside of twitter and foursquare.
If you scared of SBT, maybe another no-so-popular build tool, ABT, could be an alternative for you?
I went down the same road, and here is where I am at:
- After some initial investigation, I dropped Kate. I love to use it for most things, but when it came to things like defining tab completions, I found it sorely lacking. I would recommend that you look into gedit instead, which is much more robust for Scala development
- With gedit as my editor, I use SBT and have found it to be a great build tool. I can put it into a 'test' mode where when any code changes it recompiles the relevant files and runs my test suite. This has been an extremely effective way to work.
I have not taken a look at Buildr yet. I would like to say that I will, but honestly with SBT at my disposal I don't really have a compelling need to look at another build tool.
If you want to use Eclipse, but build the project using sbt, and still be able to debug, take a look at this post here:
zikaprog.wordpress.com/2010/04/19/scala-eclipse-sbt-and-debugging/
It also can be applied to builders other than sbt.
The latest version of the Maven Scala plugin supports Zinc/Nailgun for faster start times and faster incremental builds. See Zinc and Incremental Compilation.