I'm developing my app with Akka and Play2.
When I run the play2 app with ~run the first time and I make a GET my custom Actor system is created in the Controller and it starts a cluster on 2558 port.
If a change anything in my code and make another GET play recompiles and start over as it suppose to but the 2558 port is taken and I've got error: Failed to bind to /127.0.0.1:2558.
I don't know how to handle my own actors systems shutdown to work well with play2.
I've tried to do it in the GlobalSettings object in onStop method but with no luck.
Use play.api.libs.concurrent.Akka.system to get an actor system. You can customise this actor system however you want in application.conf. Play automatically starts it up and shuts it down for you.
If for some reason you really don't want to use this (but really, I can't think of any reason why you would ever not use it), then you need to wait for the actor system to shutdown in the GlobalSettings.onStop method, using ActorSystem.awaitTermination. Calling shutdown is non blocking, so when Play starts it back up, it's likely that the ActorSystem won't have fully shut down and released the port yet.
Also, don't create the actor system in a controller. Either create it in Global, or implement the play.api.Plugin interface and create one there (the latter is preferred for anything that has a lifecycle).