sbt-sh

If you're like me you will often find yourself typing in shell commands into the sbt shell without thinking:

> git status
[error] Not a valid key: git (similar: target)
[error] git status
[error]    ^
>

Using the sbt-sh plugin (and sbt-0.10) you can invoke shell commands:

> sh git status
# On branch master
nothing to commit (working directory clean)
> 

Happiness and productivity ensues without the hassle of exiting sbt or opening multiple terminals.

Installing

The easiest way to install the sbt-sh plugin is to add it to your global sbt plugin list. To do this create a .sbt/plugins/project file (if it does not already exist). In this file add the dependency on the sbt-sh plugin:

import sbt._

object MyPlugins extends Build {
  lazy val root = Project("root", file(".")) dependsOn(
    uri("git://github.com/steppenwells/sbt-sh.git")
  )
}

The sh plugin will be downloaded, built and installed next time you fire up sbt-0.10, and then available in all your sbt-0.10 builds.

Usage

The sbt-sh plugin introduces a sh command to sbt, this will execute the rest of the line as a shell command:

> sh ls
build.sbt
LICENSE
project
sbt
sbt-launch-0.10.0.jar
src
target
>

> sh ls -l
total 940
-rw-r--r-- 1 swells developers     66 Jun  9 15:08 build.sbt
-rw-r--r-- 1 swells developers   1394 Jun  9 15:08 LICENSE
drwxr-xr-x 4 swells developers   4096 Jun  9 15:23 project
-rwxr-xr-x 1 swells developers     69 Jun  9 15:08 sbt
-rw-r--r-- 1 swells developers 935142 Jun  9 15:08 sbt-launch-0.10.0.jar
drwxr-xr-x 3 swells developers   4096 Jun  9 15:08 src
drwxr-xr-x 3 swells developers   4096 Jun  9 15:23 target
>

> sh cat build.sbt
sbtPlugin := true

name := "xsbt-sh"

organization := "org.sbtsh"
> 

By now I'm sure you've got the idea...