sbt (software)

Mark Harrah publicly announced sbt on 18 December 2008. It was initially an abbreviation that stood for "Simple Build Tool", but it is now known simply as "sbt".[6]

An sbt build can be defined using a .sbt file [7] Below is an example of build.sbt build definition:

val scalaTest   = "org.scalatest" %% "scalatest" % "3.2.14"
val akkaVersion = "2.6.20"
val akkaActor   = "com.typesafe.akka" %% "akka-actor" % akkaVersion
val akkaCluster = "com.typesafe.akka" %% "akka-cluster" % akkaVersion

// Set the Scala version used by this build to 2.13.10.
ThisBuild / scalaVersion := "2.13.10"
ThisBuild / version      := "0.1.0-SNAPSHOT"
ThisBuild / organization := "com.example"

lazy val root = (project in file("."))
  .aggregate(helloCore)
  .dependsOn(helloCore)
  .settings(
    name := "Hello",
    // Add a single dependency, for tests.
    libraryDependencies += scalaTest % Test
  )

lazy val helloCore = (project in file("core"))
  .settings(
    name := "Hello Core",
    libraryDependencies += scalaTest % Test,
    // Add multiple dependencies.
    libraryDependencies ++= List(akkaActor, akkaCluster)
  )

sbt may be invoked for each build command, or it may enter interactive mode if no command is given. To clean build products of the current build:

$ sbt clean

Multiple commands may be used on the same line. To run a single test named "Foo" and then publish exported jars:

$ sbt "testOnly Foo" publish

The functionality of sbt can be extended through a plugin architecture.[8] A dedicated website was set up for community contributed plugins, which cover various areas such as signing, packaging, publishing and releasing artifacts, connecting to other services such as blogs and databases, or integrating with other technologies such as deploying to the Android platform.[9]

There are plugins to automatically create project files for the Eclipse and IntelliJ IDEA IDEs. On the other hand, an IntelliJ IDEA plugin allows the sbt console to be integrated into IDEA, and projects can choose to use sbt for building.

As with most software tools, sbt has found advocates and critics.

sbt is often compared to Apache Maven, which is a standard build tool in the Java world. In particular, the domain-specific language used for sbt build files is considered by some to be more cryptic than the pure declarative approach of Maven's XML files. (Some of this criticism may predate sbt's introduction of a more direct, macro-based syntax.)

The sbt project is "bootstrapped" — it uses sbt to build itself, as many compilers also do, and it considers that dogfooding is a positive feature. To the Debian project, however, that is considered a circular dependency, that they try to minimize. As a result, sbt is not yet in Debian.[10]

• List of build automation software

• Official website