A simple project

Build files

Setting up a SBT build consists of two steps

1. Create a build.sbt in your root folder
2. Create a folder named project with a single file build.properties

This is already a valid build with a single project. In the Projects section we will learn a bit more on projects and how to set up more sophisticated builds.

project/build.properties

Inside the build.properties we define the sbt version. This is usually the only thing defined in this file.

sbt.version=1.0.3

build.sbt

SBT looks for *.sbt files in your project folder. It's best practice to use a single file called build.sbt to configure your build. We will leave this file empty at the beginning and fill it with content as we move on and learn the different concepts (task, settings, scopes and projects) of SBT in more detail.¹

The content of this file is a DSL very close to Scala. However we will pretend we write Scala ;)

Application files

SBT uses the same directory layout to maven. The most important default directories are

Sample Application

We need a minimal application to work with. A simple hello world will be enough. Create src/main/scala/echo/MainApp.scala and with the following content

package echo

object MainApp extends App {
  println("Hello, world")
}

Now we are ready to configure our build!

¹. SBT build definitions ↩