Write a Simple CLI Application with Scala Native

This repository shows a simple example of writing a standalone CLI application with scala JVM and Scala Native.

Compared to using GraalVM Native Image, there is few gotcha in writing and building scala-native application!

Goal

Our goal is to write a toy application which pretty-prints a csv or json file in your terminal.

Input: test.csv

id,name,icon,comment,favorite
1,tama,😼,meow,matatabi
2,pochi,🐶,bowwow,🦴

Output

prettytable test.csv
id|name |icon|comment|favorite
==+=====+====+=======+========
1 |tama |😼  |meow   |matatabi
--+-----+----+-------+--------
2 |pochi|🐶  |bowwow |🦴

Output: test.json

prettytable test.json
website        |name                      |email                      |username          |company|id|address|phone
===============+==========================+===========================+==================+=======+==+=======+=======================
"hildegard.org"|"Leanne Graham"           |"Sincere@april.biz"        |"Bret"            |...    |1 |...    |"1-770-736-8031 x56442"
---------------+--------------------------+---------------------------+------------------+-------+--+-------+-----------------------
"anastasia.net"|"Ervin Howell"            |"Shanna@melissa.tv"        |"Antonette"       |...    |2 |...    |"010-692-6593 x09125"
---------------+--------------------------+---------------------------+------------------+-------+--+-------+-----------------------
"ramiro.info"  |"Clementine Bauch"        |"Nathan@yesenia.net"       |"Samantha"        |...    |3 |...    |"1-463-123-4447"
---------------+--------------------------+---------------------------+------------------+-------+--+-------+----------------------

Getting Started

To write a scala-native application, set up your dev environment according to following steps.

Install Scala(or sbt or bleep)

What is the differences?

• cs is a short for coursier, which is dependency resolution(and more) library for Scala. In addition to dependency fetching, coursier has a CLI which makes it easy for you to setup useful tools for Scala development.
• sbt is a de facto build tool for Scala ecosystem. You can write build tasks in Scala DSL and then sbt takes all the hard works(managing Scala version, dependencies, run tasks, etc.) to build Scala application/library on behalf of you.
• bleep is a new build tool for Scala. It is still its early phase and not stable yet. People from Rust and NodeJS may feel more comfortable with bleep build model than sbt build model.

Here, I demonstrate how to install coursier CLI and setup Scala development environment.

curl -fLo cs https://git.io/coursier-cli-"$(uname | tr LD ld)"
chmod +x cs
./cs install
rm ./cs
cs setup

Install llvm and c++

Ubuntu

sudo bash -c "$(wget -O - https://apt.llvm.org/llvm.sh)"

or

sudo apt install clang
sudo apt install libgc-dev # optional

MacOS

brew install llvm
brew install bdw-gc # optional

Then, export CLANG_PATH and CLANGPP_PATH ~/.bashrc

export CLANG_PATH=/path/to/clang-<version>
export CLANGPP_PATH=/path/to/clang++-<version>

create project

sbt new scala-native/scala-native.g8

Before writing your application, run the default application to test your environment. If it successfully compiles, it will show a greeting message.

cd <project name>
sbt run

Write Application

We use following dependencies to build the application. I recommend you have a quick look at their documentations before start.

• cats: It offers functional data structures and syntax.
• decline: It enables us to handle command-line arguments in a functional way.
• oslib: simple and unopinionated i/o utilities.
• fansi: decorate terminal output.
• argonaut: Purely Functional JSON in Scala

Add these libraryDependencies to your build.sbt.

scalaVersion := "3.3.0"

// Set to false or remove if you want to show stubs as linking errors
nativeLinkStubs := true

libraryDependencies ++= Seq(
  "org.typelevel" %%% "cats-core" % "2.9.0",
  "com.lihaoyi" %%% "fansi" % "0.4.0",
  "com.lihaoyi" %%% "os-lib" % "0.9.1",
  "com.monovore" %%% "decline" % "2.4.1",
  "io.argonaut" %%% "argonaut" % "6.3.8",
  "org.scalatest" %% "scalatest" % "3.2.16" % Test
)

enablePlugins(ScalaNativePlugin)

In addition, make sure your project/plugins.sbt has correct version of Scala Native plugin.

addSbtPlugin("org.scala-native" % "sbt-scala-native" % "0.4.12")

Now, run sbt compile to check your sbt build works.

handle i/o

To get a file path from command line argument, we use oslib. First, we check if file exists. Second, check the extension of the file. Third, if file is in csv or json format, we read and parse the content.

import os._
val path = os.pwd / cmd.fileName
if(os.isFile(path)) {
  path.ext match {
    case "csv" => os.read.lines.stream(path).foreach { line =>
       ???
     }
    case "json" => ???
    case other => UnsupportedExt(other).asLeft
  }
}else {
  Left(IsNotFile())
}

parse command line arguments with decline

Decline offers composable syntax to parse command line arguments.

For example, this command below parses an argument like <command-name> example.txt as Path.

val file = Opts.argument[Path](metavar="file")
val cmd = Command.apply("command-name","header text",true)(file)

Opts has other constructors such as Opts.arguments(accept multiple arguments), Opts.flag(accept single flag starting with --) and Opts.option(...)(accept a flag and its argument of type T like --optionname value).

val fooFlag = Opts.flag("flagname",help="description")
// Opts[Unit] = Opts(--flagname)

val intOption = Opts.option[Int](long="meaningoflife",short="m",metavar="meaning of life","???")
val cmd = Command.apply("...","...",true)(intOption)

cmd.parse(Seq("--meaningoflife","42")) // or cmd.parse(Seq("-m42"))
// Right(42)

For more details, read decline documentation.

decorate command-line output

You can add decoration to terminal output such as emphasis, underline, bold, and color using fansi.

parse json

It is easier to display array of json objects as a table than to display arbitrary json. Thus, our application accepts only json array.

To handle json string in a type-safe way, we use argonaut and its json types.

import argonaut._


val json = Parse.parse(rawValue)
json match {
  case Right(j) if j.isArray =>
    ???
  case Right(_) =>
    Left(JsonIsNotArray())
  case _ => Left(ParseError())
}

Now, start writing the application and execute sbt run command to build and run your application.

For more details, see src/main/scala/*.scala .

Useful links

• https://scala-native.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
• https://ben.kirw.in/decline/
• https://github.com/com-lihaoyi/os-lib
• https://github.com/com-lihaoyi/fansi
• scala-native documentation : http://scala-native.org/
• Write CLI Application with Scala and graal native image : https://msitko.pl/blog/2020/03/10/writing-native-cli-applications-in-scala-with-graalvm.html