The JetBrains Blog

We know that you have been waiting for SBT project support in IDEA too long. That's why we make SBT plugin nightly builds available even before an actual release of the plugin.Features Though work on SBT plugin is still in progress, the following features are already available: SBT proj…

Together with the IDEA 12 release Scala plugin brings a brand new Scala compilation subsystem. Here are the main updates: The compilation is now "external". Incremental compilation is now handled by SBT (instead of IDEA itself). Compile server is now implemented via Nailgun (instead of FSC).…

The truth is that programmers often need to embed dynamic variables into static string patterns. To accomplish this feat we used to write something like: or even A good news is that Scala 2.10 brings a shiny new string interpolation: The new syntax is more concise, offers more static checki…

Recursion is an essential tool in functional programming (FP) – it is the canonical way (and often the only way) to represent iteration. Being a hybrid object/functional language, Scala offers both recursion and imperative control structures (like do, while, etc) to express iteration. However, im…

After the introduction of chained package clauses in Scala 2.8 we have the ability to rewrite "package foo.bar" as "package foo; package bar" in order to automatically import all "foo" package entities (so, these two declarations are not equivalent). Scala plugin used to flatten packagings struct…

Usual Scala compilation never seems fast enough. There are two main reasons why: It takes a lot of time to start Scala compiler and to process standard libraries. Scala compiler doesn't support selective recompilation. The first problem is solved by FSC (Fast Scala Compiler). FSC runs a com…

Generally, we recommend using nightly builds of Scala plugin to stay up to date in cutting-edge features and bug-fixes. Most nightlies are rather stable and may often work even better than "officially stable" releases. Although we can always download the latest nightly build and update Scala plug…

There are some concerns in Scala community surrounding the introduction of Kotlin. Besides arisen Scala vs Kotlin battle, there's a question on whether JetBrains will continue to develop IntelliJ Scala plugin. To settle the doubts we would like to announce that despite Kotlin's claim that "Sca…

For a long time Scala users have been deprived of conveniences offered by automatic imports insertion on code paste (which most Java-developers take as a matter of course). Now it's time to take our revenge! Here's where the main switch lays: Now we can take some code with many dependencie…

In Scala, you may often want to replace braces with parentheses and vice versa. For example, imagine that you decided to use curly braces in the following statement: It looks like not a big deal, but in practice it takes a lot of key presses, cursor positioning, and a fight with the automatic …

In Scala it's not always obvious when some expression is an argument to a by-name parameter. New highlighting helps to easily spot such expression. (more…)…

In Scala, method signature semantics goes beyond method name, parameters and result type. The signature can also tell about whether a method has side effects, or whether a method represents a property. However, sometimes we forget about writing proper definitions or method calls. That's where 15 …