Scala CLI: road map

[romanowski]

Scala CLI was planned with 2 main goals in mind:

• replace the current 'scala' command
• provide support for the most feasible use cases, especially for single module Scala projects

Now Scala CLI supports 4 main use cases: education, scripting, reproducing/prototyping and simple projects with support for micro libraries on its way. We have created a pre-SIP for replacing the default Scala command and we hope that the SIP will be accepted in the near future. After that, we will need to spend some time aligning releases, documentation etc.

Once SIP is accepted, turning scala-cli into the official 'scala' command will be our priority.

Besides, the road map of new features/use cases that we planned for Scala CLI is as follows:

• complex support for native applications, mainly in case of bootstrapping projects and support for publishing using github releases and installing with courier. The idea is that to create a native application with Scala should be as easy as writing its code with scala-cli taking care of the bootstrap of CI, releases etc.
• new use case: Spark jobs
• protobuf and other source generators
• integration with Python using ScalaPy

Please let us know below what do you think about such a roadmap. Did we miss any important features or use cases?

[kubukoz]

I like that source generators are mentioned - looking forward to the details :)

[plokhotnyuk]

How about getting rid of the ballast like Java 8 support?

[mpkocher]

It might be useful to have a solution, or opinionated approach for documentation. For example, it would be useful to generate a README.md with a few examples that can be used as a quickstart guide.

Currently using mdoc, it looks like there's a a bit of a friction point duplicating the using lib section from your .scala.

https://github.com/scodec/hexdump4s/blob/main/buildDoc.sh

[romanowski]

How about getting rid of the ballast like Java 8 support?

Once it becomes a true ballast for us we will do it, for now it does not generate too many problems

For example, it would be useful to generate a README.md with a few examples that can be used as a quickstart guide.

Something along this lines is planned and we should start working on that in July / August.

[vishalovercome]

Can you elaborate some more on the plans as well as timelines for python integration? Scalapy as a project seems to have had no activity for the last few months and its maintainer also works on other bigger scala projects.

[romanowski]

I actually should write that integration with Python will be initially an investigation of if and how we could do it. We are not sure if we will be able to implement it in the way that it fits Scala CLI standards so there is no guarantee that Scala CLI will have Python integration in the near-to-mid term.