Scalatra without SBT

I'm trying to get started with Scalatra, but I'm running into major issues with SBT. To put it plainly, I hate it. It's the Scala equivalent of Maven. It tries to take over every single aspect of your project for a few supposed benefits. Plus, it doesn't integrate with IDEs very well. So is there a way to work with Scalatra without SBT? I really like what Scalatra has to offer, but if I can't get rid of SBT, I'm probably going to have to settle with something more bare bones, like building the features I need with Jetty.

Solution

I should have been a bit more clear. But after several hours last night, I found the answer. First, you'll need a main object like this (or similar):

object Sandbox {
    def main(args: Array[String]) {
        val server = new Server(3000)
        val context = new WebAppContext()
        context.setServer(server)
        context.setContextPath("/")
        context.setWar("webapp")
        server.setHandler(context)

        try {
            server.start()
            server.join()
        } catch {
            case e: Exception =>
                e.printStackTrace()
                System.exit(-1)
        }
    }
}

Then you'll need a servlet:

class Test extends ScalatraServlet with ScalateSupport {
    get("/") {
        <html>
            <body>
                Hello World
            </body>
        </html>
    }
}

You'll also need a ScalatraBootstrap class in your default package (must be named ScalatraBootstrap.scala:

class ScalatraBootstrap extends LifeCycle {
    override def init(context: ServletContext) {
        context.mount(new Test, "/test/*")
    }
}

Almost done. You will need a single XML file. Create a webapp/WEB-INF folder and put this web.xml file in there.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<web-app xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee"
         xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
         xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_3_0.xsd"
         version="3.0">
    <listener>
        <listener-class>org.scalatra.servlet.ScalatraListener</listener-class>
    </listener>

    <servlet-mapping>
        <servlet-name>default</servlet-name>
        <url-pattern>/img/*</url-pattern>
        <url-pattern>/css/*</url-pattern>
        <url-pattern>/js/*</url-pattern>
        <url-pattern>/assets/*</url-pattern>
    </servlet-mapping>
</web-app>

Finally, you'll need the JAR files. There's a pretty long list, but there's a fairly simple way to get them. I hate Maven, but I love the dependency management. So create a test folder somewhere and download the pom.xml file in this repo. Then go to the folder where the pom.xml is and run mvn dependency:copy-dependencies. Grab the JARs from the dependencies folder and you're good to go. No Maven, no SBT, no magic. Run and debug in your IDE like you always do. :)