Metals VS scala-cli

Links: - https://dotty.epfl.ch/ - https://scala-native.org/en/stable/ - https://www.scala-js.org/ - https://typelevel.org/ - https://zio.dev/ - https://github.com/scala-native/scala-native/pull/3120 - https://github.com/lampepfl/dotty/pull/16517 - https://dotty.epfl.ch/docs/reference/experimental/index.html - https://scala-cli.virtuslab.org/ - https://scalameta.org/metals/ - https://docs.scala-lang.org/scala3/guides/migration/compatibility-intro.html - https://www.scala-lang.org/blog/2023/04/18/faster-scalajs-development-with-frontend-tooling.html - https://www.scala-lang.org/blog/2022/08/17/long-term-compatibility-plans.html

You might want to look at Scala, they have proper LSP support with metals which means you can write your code in vscode, neovim, emacs, or even fleet (the new jetbrains text editor).

Please write in the comments if you know of any language servers I should test it with. Currently I tested only metals and rust-analyzer.

If you are using nvim-lspconfig you can pass the settings as a Lua table to the setup function. For example, here are may metals settings:

Bazel support in Metals. I didn't spend all that time figuring out and adjusting Emacs/Spacemacs and making my workflow (almost) mouse-free just to scrap my config and switch to IDEA's rodent infested ways.

There is one small issue involving code completion returning inappropriate completions in some cases; https://github.com/scalameta/metals/pull/4414 will fix it, once it's included in a release. Perhaps that's the PR you saw?

It is, by quite a bit.

While the "Scala IDE" project is dead for all practical purposes, IntelliJ IDEA's Scala plugin is actually pretty amazing. There's also a VisualStudio plugin that does pretty much the same and is advancing by leaps and bounds. There are also interconnecting projects that provide i.e. language server or build server that are reused by other projects. It's pretty modular. Metals (https://scalameta.org/metals/) is amazing.

In general the language has become a wee bit faster to build, there was good progress with build times during the 2.12/2.13 cycles.

With Scala3 the language got a bit simpler; concepts that were implemented explicitly using (hehe) implicits got their own keywords and a lot of the opinionated boilercode that cause a lot of debates is now generated during complication and hidden. A lot of "standardization" has occurred.

IntelliJ has its own BSP. The other one is Metals. You can use it with many IDEs (vim, emacs, vscode, atom,...). Use it with emacs if you're comfortable with it.

That has not much to do with the JVM. See Scala CLI[1] for instance, the developer experience is pretty similar to Cargo.

The thing is, with any non-trivial project, zero to hello world isn't a very useful metric. Gradle (and Maven, sbt, ...) do a lot more than Cargo, and their usage is primarily optimized for complex multi-modules projects.

[1] https://scala-cli.virtuslab.org

Scala CLI v1.0.5 was released. https://github.com/VirtusLab/scala-cli/releases/tag/v1.0.5 This includes:

The new official Scala build tool / compiler front end (scala-cli) is amazing,

https://scala-cli.virtuslab.org/

The thing that really struck me after years of python is how it lets you out dependencies directly in a comment on top of a script and it will download and run with them automatically, without poisoning any system settings. It's so simple!

sbt can indeed be a bit harsh for beginners. If your aim is not to build a big project, you might want to use scala-cli instead : no complex build script, only command line goodness to run, test, compile and package your code. Yes it supports dockerization. No need for a dockerfile.

Imo the tooling has to become way more user friendly. The Scala community has picked up on this and made Scala-CLI the official running tool for Scala. It's a great tool for single module projects and makes everything from adding dependencies to building fat jars very easy, also the runner comes as a native image. The reason I'm mentioning is because sometimes we forget how hard it can be as a beginner, especially when younger people are used to simpler CLIs from newer languages.

We even have a ticket for something similar right here. Feel free to upvote and/or comment on it.

Links: - https://dotty.epfl.ch/ - https://scala-native.org/en/stable/ - https://www.scala-js.org/ - https://typelevel.org/ - https://zio.dev/ - https://github.com/scala-native/scala-native/pull/3120 - https://github.com/lampepfl/dotty/pull/16517 - https://dotty.epfl.ch/docs/reference/experimental/index.html - https://scala-cli.virtuslab.org/ - https://scalameta.org/metals/ - https://docs.scala-lang.org/scala3/guides/migration/compatibility-intro.html - https://www.scala-lang.org/blog/2023/04/18/faster-scalajs-development-with-frontend-tooling.html - https://www.scala-lang.org/blog/2022/08/17/long-term-compatibility-plans.html

Code gens are not that far away: https://github.com/VirtusLab/scala-cli/issues/610

Check out Scala CLI as it will very soon be the one true and sanctioned way to get started.