Created by admin on 2009-04-24. Updated: 2009-06-02, 18:25

It's ready! The new stable release of the Scala distribution, Scala 2.7.4 final, is now available from our Download Page. This new version is a maintenance release; several bugs have been fixed, but at this stage we are only adding new features to the new Scala 2.8 codebase, which should be complete within a few months. The version 2.7.4 of the Scala IDE for Eclipse, however, introduces many improvements, listed below.

This version will be the last release of the 2.7.x branch, and will also be the last one to support the old version 1.4 of the Java Virtual Machine. Please read below for further details on what is new in Scala 2.7.4, and in the new and improved Scala IDE for Eclipse.

The Scala 2.7.4 distribution

What is new?

The 2.7.4 release of Scala includes several bug fixes, listed below:



Scala Swing is now also included in the JVM 1.4-compatible version of the distribution. Please note that Scala 2.7.4 is the last version of Scala to support version 1.4 of the Java Virtual Machine. Future versions will require Java 5 or newer.

The Scala IDE for Eclipse

The following release notes are by the lead plugin developer, Miles Sabin.

Highlights

This release is based on a new approach to integration with the Eclipse JDT which makes use of Equinox Aspects and the JDT weaving functionality developed in conjunction with Andrew Eisenberg of AJDT.

This allows for much deeper and more robust interoperation between Eclipse's Scala and Java tooling. As a result many long standing bugs have been resolved (see below) and many additional JDT features will now work correctly with Scala projects.

From 2.7.4 onwards the new name for the plugin is the Scala IDE for Eclipse (thanks to Ian Skerrett of the Eclipse Foundation for the suggestion).

Since 2.7.3 I have taken on the role of lead for the project.

Installation Notes

The recommended installation method is using the Scala IDE for Eclipse update site; the update site is at:

Note that this is an update site URLs, and is not navigable using a web-browser. Please see this page for further information.

Currently (as of April 2009) it is difficult (but not impossible) to install the Scala IDE into a readonly Eclipse installation. This is resolved on very recent builds of Eclipse 3.5 (post M6) but for now it's recommended to install from the RC update site directly into a fresh read-write Eclipse installation. Instructions for installing into a read-only or otherwise unusually laid out Eclipse can be found in the section "Installing JDT Weaving in a non-default location" of this guide.

If you don't install into a fresh Eclipse instance, I would recommend uninstalling any previous Scala IDE versions first.

Upgrade Notes

It's no longer necessary to have per-projects settings for the Java builder (disabling output folder scrubbing and preventing the copying of .scala files to the output folder). It's not strictly necessary to remove these settings, but it's advisable. This should improve the behaviour of tools which generate Eclipse projects programmatically (eg. Maven).

There have been some minor changes to the way syntax highlight colour preferences are stored ... if things don't look quite as you'd expect then I recommend resetting them to their defaults and redo any customization you had previously.

There are persistent issues with dependency management which might show us after upgrading. If you experience hangs or extremely slow builds then I recommend locating and deleting the .manager folders that you will find at the top level of your Scala project. I expect this issue to be resolved in 2.8.0 which will make use of a significantly improved dependency management mechanism.

Bugs Fixed

The following bugfixes and enhancements are included in this release:

References

Equinox Aspects:

http://www.eclipse.org/equinox/incubator/aspects/

http://www.eclipse.org/equinox/incubator/aspects/ JDT weaving features:

http://wiki.eclipse.org/JDT_weaving_features

http://wiki.eclipse.org/JDT_weaving_features AJDT:

http://www.eclipse.org/ajdt/

http://www.eclipse.org/ajdt/ The Scala IDE for Eclipse FAQ:

http://lampsvn.epfl.ch/trac/scala/wiki/EclipsePluginFAQ

http://lampsvn.epfl.ch/trac/scala/wiki/EclipsePluginFAQ Notes for (potential) contributors:

http://lampsvn.epfl.ch/trac/scala/wiki/EclipsePlugin

Acknowledgements

The following people provided patches and/or significant insights into bugs or new features included in this release:

Pawel Badenski

Mohamed Bana

David Bernard

Andrew Gaydenko

Ben Hutchison

Ismael Juma

Joshua Suereth

Many thanks ... much appreciated. (Apologies if I've left anyone out ... please let me know if I have).

And many thanks to everyone who has helped improve the plugin by reporting bugs and asking and answering questions on the mailing lists and #scala.

Cheers,

Miles