IntelliJ IDEA Scala plugin 2017.2: SBT 1.0, improved SBT Shell, Play 2.6 and better implicits management

Anton Yalyshev

This summer, we are happy to announce a number of new features and improvements in the Scala Plugin. Some of them we decided to introduce in the 2017.1 updates, as soon as they were ready. And the rest are coming to you now – with IntelliJ IDEA 2017.2. We appreciate the contributions of all EAP participants. So, let’s do a brief overview of the recent changes.

Debugging in SBT Shell

Not so long ago we introduced SBT Shell which makes work with SBT project in IntelliJ IDEA more convenient. We continued to improve this feature and can now announce its integration with debugger. With one button click the SBT Shell launches the Debugger server and connects to it.

Before debugging, just make sure you’ve run the Debugger server via a click on the left-side panel in SBT Shell.

Play 2.6 support

Play Framework recently released its 2.6 version with lots of cool features. We’ve provided support for all this new functionality via gutter icons, code highlighting, navigation and project wizard to make your work more comfortable and effective.

Implicits management

We’ve improved the Type Annotations inspection by including implicit declarations processing. Any implicit is worth being explicitly annotated. It significantly increases the performance of compilation and IDE code analysis. It reduces the risk of a type inconsistency. Moreover it’s obligatorily in Dotty. You can configure this inspection by going to Preferences / Editor / Code Style / Scala / Type Annotations.

Another feature – if you call Smart Completion for following types: akka.actor.ActorRef, scala.concurrent.Future and collections from java.util, scala.collection, it also suggests implicit conversions, and adds import statements automatically:

SBT 1.0 support

In the middle of July, Lightbend announced SBT 1.0.0-RC2. A list of new features, fixes, and other changes you may find here. We keep track of SBT 1.0 progress and support of all its new functionality. The Scala Plugin 2017.2.5 already has partial support of SBT 1.0 RC2, and we have plans to declare complete support in newest plugin update.

Your feedback on these improvements is very welcome. Expect more features and improvements in the 2017.2 updates of the IntelliJ Scala plugin.

P.S: Don’t forget to report bugs / ideas to our issue tracker.

Drive to develop!