How to execute a bash script as sbt task

sbt

I want to automatically build documentation for my Java Play 2.3 application.
At the moment, I use a Makefile to generate images from *.dotfiles and combine Markdown sources together into Html/PDF:

dot diagram1.dot -Tpdf -o diagram1.pdf
dot diagram2.dot -Tpdf -o diagram2.pdf
pandoc doc1.markdown -o doc1.pdf
# ...

Now I want to run these simple bash commands directly from SBT.
What's the best way to do this?

I found some SBT Documentation plugins in the SBT reference, but nothing to run a simple shell script.

Best Solution

You can find some answers in External Processes in the official documentation of sbt, e.g.

To run an external command, follow it with an exclamation mark !:
 "find project -name *.jar" !

Don't forget to use import scala.sys.process._ so ! can be resolved as a method of String.

Do the following in activator console (aka sbt shell) to execute yourshell.sh - mind the eval command and the quotes around the name of the script:

eval "yourshell.sh" !

To have it available as a task add the following to build.sbt of your project:

lazy val execScript = taskKey[Unit]("Execute the shell script")

execScript := {
  "yourshell.sh" !
}

Related Solutions

How to check sbt version

$ sbt sbtVersion

This prints the sbt version used in your current project, or if it is a multi-module project for each module.

$ sbt 'inspect sbtVersion'
[info] Set current project to jacek (in build file:/Users/jacek/)
[info] Setting: java.lang.String = 0.13.1
[info] Description:
[info]  Provides the version of sbt.  This setting should be not be modified.
[info] Provided by:
[info]  */*:sbtVersion
[info] Defined at:
[info]  (sbt.Defaults) Defaults.scala:68
[info] Delegates:
[info]  *:sbtVersion
[info]  {.}/*:sbtVersion
[info]  */*:sbtVersion
[info] Related:
[info]  */*:sbtVersion

You may also want to use sbt about that (copying Mark Harrah's comment):

The about command was added recently to try to succinctly print the most relevant information, including the sbt version.

How to “re-run with -deprecation for details” in sbt

sbt shell

While in sbt shell (if you don't want to change your build.sbt):

$ sbt
> set ThisBuild/scalacOptions ++= Seq("-unchecked", "-deprecation")
> compile
> exit

Due to in ThisBuild, set applies the settings to all sub-projects, as well.

Command Line

You could also run the above as a single command on command line.

sbt '; set ThisBuild/scalacOptions ++= Seq("-unchecked", "-deprecation") ; compile'

The trick is to use ; (semicolons) to separate commands and ' (ticks) to include all ;-separated commands as a single argument to sbt.

sbt < 1.x

Instead of ThisBuild/scalacOptions use scalacOptions in ThisBuild