Which IDE for Scala 2.8?

Question

This is the same question for older version of Scala, but they say that Eclipse plugin has been improved vastly. Is it the best IDE now? How do different Scala IDE compare t

Answer 1

JetBrains IDEA's Scala plug-in handles 2.7 and 2.8 equally well.

I cannot make any comparisons because I have used only IDEA.

Answer 2

It partly depends on your style of working, as all the options have strengths and weaknesses.

If you need refactoring across mixed java/scala projects, then IntelliJ is your only option.

If you want to do any work on the compiler or a compiler plugin, then Eclipse has the advantage of being able to launch a runtime workspace with a custom compiler build, including breakpoints. It also improved massively for the 2.8 Scala release.

Netbeans is a fine choice to go with if you're already very familiar with that platform, the costs of learning a new environment may well outweigh any benefits, and all three solutions are improving rapidly.

Answer 3

I think that the best option so far is the ScalaIDE for Eclipse. You can go to the ScalaIDE Web Site and look around to see by yourself. http://scala-ide.org/

Strong points I see about it are:

• documentation,
• tutorials,
• constant releases,
• support from Typesafe.

Here below a summary of the main features:

Scala IDE provides support for development of Scala applications in the Eclipse platform. Its main target is the support for the Scala language and the integration with the Eclipse Java tools. It provides many of the features Eclipse users have come to expect including:

• Support for mixed Scala/Java projects and any combination of Scala/Java project dependencies. Type driven operations are transparent across Scala and Java files and projects, allowing straightforward references from Scala to Java and vice versa.
• A Scala editor with syntax highlighting, inferred type, hyperlinking to definitions, code completion, error and warning markers, indentation, brace matching.
• Project and source navigation including Scala support in the Package explorer view with embedded outline, outline view, quick outline, open type, open type hierarchy.
• Incremental compilation, application launching with integrated debugger, hyperlinking from stack traces to Scala source, interactive console.
• Support for Eclipse plug-in and OSGi development including hyperlinking to Scala source from plugin.xml and manifest files.

UPDATE: the features and advantages are mentioned on this answer are for version 2.9 and 2.10 of Scala, because it has been already discontinued. see here:

"The 2.0.1 release is only available for Scala 2.9, if you would like to use the Scala IDE with Scala 2.8, please install the 2.0.0 release (support for Scala 2.8 has been discontinued after the 2.0.0 version)"

Answer 4

I don't recommend the Scala IDE/Eclipse. It doesn't have a lot of the features that are even available for Eclipse with Java. And there are bugs.

Answer 5

i use both eclipse and IDEA

1. eclipse supports type detection is better than IDEA (it is very neccessery thing if you want program in functional style that you can be aware from type of expressions and variables.)

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   Edit1: IDEA supports type detection like eclipse but you have to define a value in your functions for example: def testTs[A](a:List[String],b:List[A]) = for{ ai <- a bi <- b } yield (ai,bi) } should be converted to def testTs[A](a:List[String],b:List[A]):List[(String,A)]={ val result = for{ ai <- a bi <- b } yield (ai,bi) } also instead of hover your mouse over variables you must press ctrl+q when your mouse is hover on that variable

2. eclipse have some problems in code completion (when you use a variable in next line and you want get a property of this variable eclipse show wrong code suggestions)
3. in IDEA ruining a scala application is 5 sec slower than eclipse (there is some solution for bust IDEA run time but these have side effect have some problems) in idea there is a well known problem with double click speed that show itself in many cases like opening a file or selecting an string in source... you can increase double click time out by creating (or editing) /home/.Xresources and add this line: *.multiClickTime: 400

Edit1: in summery i prefer to use IDEA rather than eclipse

Answer 6

Using Eclipse Helios with the dev-version of the new Scala(2.8) plugin, as there isn't an official release yet. That is beta, definitively -- but I can't confirm the frequently expressed opinion that this plugin is outright horrible ;-)

I'd say, the experience is already OK-ish, and indeed better than the current state of affairs with the Groovy plugin. OTOH, the experience with plain Java is way more smooth (feels like flying at times), and the current CDT I'd rate somewhat in between.

Incremental compile and error highlighting work quite well for me; tweaking a DSL implementation into form just by continuously rewriting your code until the error markers are gone -- without ever having to test-run your program -- is outright fun and just again shows that FP / static typing rocks!

Problems encountered from time to time: - implicits and nested types in other compilation units (esp. nested / super packages) aren't picked up at times when there are still other errors around; they will be picked up after an full build - there seems to be a memory leak in the version I'm using right now (from end august 2010), necessitating to restart the workbench after some hours of work - beware when you're using AspectJ, to make sure you get a version of the Scala plugin which relies on a JDT weaving bundle version which also works with AJDT

PS: I'm using maven builds in all my projects and generated the eclipse projects with the eclipse-maven-plugin, and then imported them as plain-flat eclipse projects. I can just strongly recommend everyone to keep away from the M2-eclipse plugin (for maven) in its current (2010) state, it makes your workbench painfully slow, is buggy and has lots of almost unpredictable behaviour, because it constantly tries to do magic things behind the scenes (and besides that, the aspectj support is broken since this spring)