SBT 0.7.7 or 0.10.1 for wicket webapp project using jetty for dev

Question

I'm new to Scala and wanting to develop a simple little Scala Wicket webapp to try it out.

I would like to use Jetty as the server for my dev purposes and SBT as the build tool (definitely not maven please).

Is SBT 0.10.1 a good choice, or is sticking with 0.7.7 better? Please note that at this point I just want to learn, and am not particularly concerned with advanced features. The absolute most important thing is that this is as EASY AS POSSIBLE. Build processes are in particular an extreme pain point for me, I have far less patience with them than anything else in software development. The truth is that I love developing software, but hate build configuration.

So let me know which is a better choice in terms of being straightforward and getting a webapp running with continuous redeployment using Jetty.

Oh, btw, I'm developing with Intellij IDEA 10.5, and can use it's sbt-idea build plugin, but that appears to support both 0.7.7 and 0.10.1, so that should not be an issue either way.

Thanks guys!
Jamie

Answer 1

I would suggest 0.10.x, otherwise you are investing in learning an outdated version.

Read the Setup page on the SBT Wiki to get started. Spend some time to browse through the rest of the Wiki -- but don't worry if you don't understand everything first time.

You will need the xsbt-web-plugin; it provides an sample project.

Config is as easy as:

seq(webSettings :_*)

scalaVersion := "2.8.1"

libraryDependencies ++= Seq(
    "net.liftweb" %% "lift-webkit" % "2.3" % "compile",
    "org.eclipse.jetty" % "jetty-webapp" % "7.3.0.v20110203" % "jetty",
    "ch.qos.logback" % "logback-classic" % "0.9.26"
)

Answer 2

I also suggest to go with 0.10.x. Take a look at https://github.com/wicketstuff/core/tree/master/jdk-1.5-parent/scala-extensions-parent. The project itself can be build with both Maven and SBT 0.10.1 but the archetype still creates only Maven's pom.xml.

Answer 3

Definitely SBT 0.10.x. It has been a long time in development, but it is an official release now. I'm not going to bother repeating what others have answered (retronym's answer pretty good), but look at the scripts page as well. It provides a simple way to invoke the REPL with dependencies, as well as having scripts that depend on SBT configuration.