search term:

setup-sbt GitHub Action

In February 2024, GitHub released macOS 13 and 14 runner images, making it possible to run CI on ARM macs easily. However, people who started using it noticed that sbt runner script was missing from the new macOS images (actions/runner-images#9369). ubuntu-24.04 is also missing sbt runner.

I’ve created sbt/setup-sbt action to install the official sbt runner script and the launcher.

basic usage

env:
  JAVA_OPTS: -Xms2048M -Xmx2048M -Xss6M -XX:ReservedCodeCacheSize=256M -Dfile.encoding=UTF-8
steps:
- uses: actions/checkout@v4
- name: Setup JDK
  uses: actions/setup-java@v4
  with:
    distribution: temurin
    java-version: 17
    cache: sbt
- uses: sbt/setup-sbt@v1
- name: Build and test
  shell: bash
  run: sbt -v +test

This will download the official installer and installs sbt.

before

before

after

after

This confirms that sbt runner is on the PATH on macos-13, macos-14, and ubuntu-24.04.

making custom GitHub Actions

Follow About custom actions for the documentation of creating a custom GitHub Action. If you can express everything you want using Bash and other existing actions, you can create a composite action, which is by default cross-platform.

setup-sbt is straightforward. It caches setupsbt/ directory, downloads the official .zip file from GitHub Release, and make sbt available to PATH.

name: "Setup sbt"
description: "Sets up sbt runner script"
inputs:
  sbt-runner-version:
    description: "The runner version (The actual version is controlled via project/build.properties)"
    required: true
    default: 1.10.0
runs:
  using: "composite"
  steps:
    - name: Cache sbt distribution
      id: cache-dir
      uses: actions/cache@v4
      with:
        path: setupsbt
        key: ${{ runner.os }}-sbt-${{ inputs.sbt-runner-version }}

    - name: "Install sbt"
      shell: bash
      if: steps.cache-dir.outputs.cache-hit != 'true'
      run: |
        mkdir -p setupsbt
        curl -sL https://github.com/sbt/sbt/releases/download/v$SBT_RUNNER_VERSION/sbt-$SBT_RUNNER_VERSION.zip > setupsbt/sbt-$SBT_RUNNER_VERSION.zip
        pushd setupsbt
        unzip -o "sbt-$SBT_RUNNER_VERSION.zip"
        popd        
      env:
        SBT_RUNNER_VERSION: ${{ inputs.sbt-runner-version }}

    - name: "Setup PATH"
      shell: bash
      run: |
        pushd setupsbt
        ls sbt/bin/sbt
        echo "$PWD/sbt/bin" >> "$GITHUB_PATH"
        popd

summary

Some newer runner images on GitHub Actions are now missing sbt runner script. - uses: sbt/setup-sbt@v1 provides a one-liner workaround to this incovenience.