Scala Cookbook

14.7. Finding Scala Libraries

Problem

Ruby has the RubyGems package manager, which lets developers easily distribute and manage the installation of Ruby libraries; does Scala have anything like this?

Solution

Prior to Scala 2.9.2, a tool named sbaz shipped with Scala, but it wasn’t very popular. Instead, most tools are “discovered” by paying attention to the mailing lists, using a search engine, and being aware of a few key websites.

As discussed in Chapter 18, once you’ve found a tool you want to use, you usually add it as a dependency to your project with SBT. For instance, to include libraries into your project, such as ScalaTest and Mockito, just add lines like this to your SBT build.sbt file:

resolvers += "Typesafe Repository" at    "http://repo.typesafe.com/typesafe/releases/"

libraryDependencies ++= Seq(
  "org.scalatest" %% "scalatest" % "1.8" % "test",
  "org.mockito" % "mockito-core" % "1.9.0" % "test"
)

SBT has become the de facto tool for building Scala applications and managing dependencies. Possibly because of this success, a system like RubyGems hasn’t evolved, or been necessary.

Some of the top ways of finding Scala libraries are:

• Searching for libraries using a search engine, or ls.implicit.ly.

• Asking questions and searching the [e-mail] and [e-mail] mailing lists.

• New software is also announced at the “scala-announce” mailing list; you can find a list of Scala mailing lists online.

• Viewing tools listed at the Scala wiki.

• Scala project updates ...