Welcome!

This is the official repository for the Scala Programming Language.

How to contribute

To contribute to the Scala Standard Library, Scala Compiler and Scala Language Specification, please send us a pull request from your fork of this repository! We do have to ask you to sign the Scala CLA before we can merge any of your work into our code base, to protect its open source nature.

For more information on building and developing the core of Scala, make sure to read the rest of this README!

In order to get in touch with Scala contributors, join the scala/contributors gitter channel or post on the scala-internals mailing list.

Reporting issues

We're still using Jira for issue reporting, so please report any issues over there. (We would love to start using GitHub Issues, but we're too resource-constrained to take on this migration right now.)

Get in touch!

If you need some help with your PR at any time, please feel free to @-mention anyone from the list below, and we will do our best to help you out:

	username	talk to me about...
	@adriaanm	type checker, pattern matcher, infrastructure, language spec
	@SethTisue	build, developer docs, community build, Jenkins, library, the welcome-to-Scala experience
	@retronym	compiler performance, weird compiler bugs, Java 8 lambdas, REPL
	@Ichoran	collections library, performance
	@lrytz	optimizer, named & default arguments
	@VladUreche	specialization, Scaladoc tool
	@densh	quasiquotes, parser, string interpolators, macros in standard library
	@xeno-by	macros and reflection
	@heathermiller	documentation
	@dickwall	process & community, documentation
	@dragos	specialization, back end
	@axel22	collections, concurrency, specialization
	@janekdb	documentation

P.S.: If you have some spare time to help out around here, we would be delighted to add your name to this list!

Repository structure

scala/
+--build.sbt                 The main sbt build script
+--lib/                      Pre-compiled libraries for the build
+--src/                      All sources
   +---/library              Scala Standard Library
   +---/reflect              Scala Reflection
   +---/compiler             Scala Compiler
   +---/eclipse              Eclipse project files
   +---/intellij             IntelliJ project templates
+--spec/                     The Scala language specification
+--scripts/                  Scripts for the CI jobs (including building releases)
+--test/                     The Scala test suite
   +---/files                Partest tests
   +---/junit                JUnit tests
+--build/                    [Generated] Build output directory

Get Ready to Contribute

Requirements

You need the following tools:

• Java SDK. The baseline version is 8 for 2.12.x. It may be possible to use a later SDK for local development, but the CI will verify against the baseline version.
• sbt. We recommend the sbt-extras runner script. It provides sensible default jvm options (stack and heap size).

Mac OS X and Linux work. Windows may work if you use Cygwin. Community help with keeping the build working on Windows is appreciated.

Build Setup

Basics

During ordinary development, a new Scala build is built by the previously released version. For short we call the previous release "starr": the stable reference Scala release. Building with starr is sufficient for most kinds of changes.

However, a full build of Scala (a bootstrap, as performed by our CI) requires two layers. This guarantees that every Scala version can build itself. If you change the code generation part of the Scala compiler, your changes will only show up in the bytecode of the library and compiler after a bootstrap. See below for how to do a bootstrap build locally.

For history on how the current scheme was arrived at, see https://groups.google.com/d/topic/scala-internals/gp5JsM1E0Fo/discussion.

Using the sbt Build

Core commands:

• compile compiles all sub-projects (library, reflect, compiler, scaladoc, etc)
• scala / scalac run the REPL / compiler directly from sbt (accept options / arguments)
• dist/mkBin generates runner scripts (scala, scalac, etc) in build/quick/bin
• dist/mkPack creates a build in the Scala distribution format in build/pack
• test runs the JUnit test, testOnly *immutable.ListTest runs a subset
• partest runs partest tests (accepts options, try partest --help)
• publishLocal publishes a distribution locally (can be used as scalaVersion in other sbt projects)
  • Optionally set baseVersionSuffix := "-bin-abcd123-SNAPSHOT" where abcd123 is the git hash of the revision being published. You can also use something custom like "-bin-mypatch". This changes the version number from 2.12.2-SNAPSHOT to something more stable (2.12.2-bin-abcd123-SNAPSHOT).
  • Note that the -bin string marks the version binary compatible. Using it in sbt will cause the scalaBinaryVersion to be 2.12. If the version is not binary compatible, we recommend using -pre, e.g., 2.13.0-pre-abcd123-SNAPSHOT.
  • Optionally set publishArtifact in (Compile, packageDoc) in ThisBuild := false to skip generating / publishing API docs (speeds up the process).

Sandbox

We recommend to keep local test files in the sandbox directory which is listed in the .gitignore of the Scala repo.

Incremental Compilation

Note that sbt's incremental compilation is often too coarse for the Scala compiler codebase and re-compiles too many files, resulting in long build times (check sbt#1104 for progress on that front). In the meantime you can:

• Enable "Ant mode" in which sbt only re-compiles source files that were modified. Create a file local.sbt containing the line antStyle := true. Add an entry local.sbt to your ~/.gitignore.
• Use IntelliJ IDEA for incremental compiles (see IDE Setup below) - its incremental compiler is a bit less conservative, but usually correct.

Bootstrapping Locally

To perform a bootstrap using sbt

• first a build is published either locally or on a temporary repository,
• then a separate invocation of sbt (using the previously built version as starr) is used to build / publish the actual build.

Assume the current starr version is 2.12.0 (defined in versions.properties) and the current version is 2.12.0-SNAPSHOT (defined in build.sbt). To perform a local bootstrap:

• Run publishLocal (you may want to specify a custom version suffix and skip generating API docs, see above).
• Quit sbt and start a new sbt instance using sbt -Dstarr.version=<version> where <version> is the version number you published locally.
• If the version number you published is not binary compatible with the current starr, set every scalaBinaryVersion := "2.12.0-M4". This is not required if the version you published locally is binary compatible, i.e., if the current starr is a 2.12.x release and not a milestone / RC.

The last step is required to resolve modules (scala-xml, scala-partest, etc). It assumes that the module releases for the current starr work (in terms of binary compatibility) with the local starr that you published locally. A full bootstrap requires re-building the all the modules. On our CI this is handled by the bootstrap script, but it (currently) cannot be easily executed locally.

IDE Setup

You may use IntelliJ IDEA (see src/intellij/README.md), the Scala IDE for Eclipse (see src/eclipse/README.md), or ENSIME (see this page on the ENSIME site).

In order to use IntelliJ's incremental compiler:

• run dist/mkBin in sbt to get a build and the runner scripts in build/quick/bin
• run "Build" - "Make Project" in IntelliJ

Now you can edit and build in IntelliJ and use the scripts (compiler, REPL) to directly test your changes. You can also run the scala, scalac and partest commands in sbt. Enable "Ant mode" (explained above) to prevent sbt's incremental compiler from re-compiling (too many) files before each partest invocation.

Coding Guidelines

Our guidelines for contributing are explained in CONTRIBUTING.md. It contains useful information on our coding standards, testing, documentation, how we use git and GitHub and how to get your code reviewed.

You may also want to check out the following resources:

• The "Scala Hacker Guide" covers some of the same ground as this README, but in greater detail and in a more tutorial style, using a running example.
• Scala documentation site

Scala CI

Once you submit a PR your commits will be automatically tested by the Scala CI.

If you see a spurious build failure, you can post /rebuild as a PR comment. The scabot README lists all available commands.

If you'd like to test your patch before having everything polished for review, feel free to submit a PR and add the WIP label. In case your WIP branch contains a large number of commits (that you didn't clean up / squash yet for review), consider adding [ci: last-only] to the PR title. That way only the last commit will be tested, saving some energy and CI-resources. Note that inactive WIP PRs will be closed eventually, which does not mean the change is being rejected.

CI performs a full bootstrap. The first task, validate-publish-core, publishes a build of your commit to the temporary repository https://scala-ci.typesafe.com/artifactory/scala-pr-validation-snapshots. Note that this build is not yet bootstrapped, its bytecode is built using the current starr. The version number is 2.12.2-bin-abcd123-SNAPSHOT where abcd123 is the commit hash. For binary incompatible builds, the version number is 2.13.0-pre-abcd123-SNAPSHOT.

You can use Scala builds in the validation repository locally by adding a resolver and specifying the corresponding scalaVersion:

$ sbt
> set resolvers += "pr" at "https://scala-ci.typesafe.com/artifactory/scala-pr-validation-snapshots/"
> set scalaVersion := "2.12.2-bin-abcd123-SNAPSHOT"
> console

Note that the scala modules are currently not built / published against the tested version during CI validation.

Nightly Builds

The Scala CI builds nightly download releases (including all modules) and publishes them to the following locations:

• 2.12.x
• 2.11.x

The CI also publishes nightly API docs:

• 2.12.x
  • symlink to the latest
• 2.11.x
  • symlink to the latest

Using a nightly build in sbt is explained in this answer on Stack Overflow

Scala CI Internals

The Scala CI runs as a Jenkins instance on scala-ci.typesafe.com, configured by a chef cookbook at scala/scala-jenkins-infra.

The build bot that watches PRs, triggers testing builds and applies the "reviewed" label after an LGTM comment is in the scala/scabot repo.

Community Build

The community build is a central element for testing Scala releases. A community build can be launched for any Scala revision / commit. It first builds the Scala library and compiler and then uses that Scala version to build a large number of open-source projects from source.

Community builds run on the Scala Jenkins instance, the jobs are named ..-integrate-community-build. The community build definitions specifying which projects are built are in the scala/community-builds repo.