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116			<h1>Reforesting the sbt plugin ecosystem and sbt 2.1.0 beta</h1>
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128						<time datetime="2026-09-16 00:00:00 +0200">Wednesday 16 September 2026</time>
129						<p>Eugene Yokota</p>
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138					<!-- <h2><a href="/blog/2026/09/16/sbt-plugin-updates.html">Reforesting the sbt plugin ecosystem and sbt 2.1.0 beta</a></h2> -->
139					<blockquote>
140  <p>This post covers work done under the <a href="https://www.scala-lang.org/blog/2026/01/27/sta-invests-in-scala.html">Sovereign Tech Fund investment</a> umbrella: <a href="https://contributors.scala-lang.org/t/sbt-2-production-ready-roadmap/7351">sbt 2 Stable Release and Maintenance</a>. The work is coordinated by the <a href="https://scala.epfl.ch/">Scala Center</a>.</p>
141</blockquote>
142
143<h2 id="plugin-as-an-ecosystem">Plugin as an ecosystem</h2>
144
145<p>Out of the box, sbt handles basic functionality like building and testing Scala code. Once you get used to the basics, the build can be extended further by using community plugins. Plugins range from simple utilities to support for new programming languages.</p>
146
147<p>One aspect of a plugin project is that it can be created and developed without waiting for a release of sbt, so it’s a great way to try new ideas or collaborate across the community. If you want to discover plugins two sources are:</p>
148
149<ul>
150  <li><strong><a href="https://www.scala-sbt.org/2.x/docs/en/community-plugins.html">Community Plugins</a></strong> page</li>
151  <li><strong><a href="https://index.scala-lang.org/search?platform=sbt2">Scaladex</a></strong></li>
152</ul>
153
154<h3 id="preparing-for-reforestation">Preparing for reforestation</h3>
155
156<p>Since the ecosystem is an essential element of the user experience, the health of the plugin ecosystem is always our concern. This is especially so when we release a new major version, which <em>burns the old forest</em>. All plugins need to be cross built, and re-published, like new saplings springing from the ash. There are several strategies we adopted to aid the reforestation.</p>
157
158<ul>
159  <li>Over the years, we have centralized major plugins to <a href="https://github.com/sbt">GitHub sbt</a> organization. This lets us add new maintainers to the plugin who can review the PRs.</li>
160  <li>Created the <a href="https://github.com/sbt/sbt/wiki/sbt-2.x-plugin-migration">sbt 2.x plugin migration</a> wiki page to coordinate the migration effort.</li>
161  <li>We locked down the ABI for 2.x with 2.0.0-RC1, which was released in August 2025. This gave a head start for the plugin authors to cross publish before sbt 2.0 came out.</li>
162  <li>In March 2026, Anatolii Kmetiuk (Scala Center) created <a href="/blog/2026/03/02/sbt2-compat.html">sbt2-compat plugin</a>, which adds a compatibility layer so that the same plugin can target both sbt 1 and sbt 2.</li>
163  <li>Beyond tooling, we’ve actively sent pull requests to migrate the plugins.</li>
164</ul>
165
166<p>I’m happy to report that as of this writing (September 2026), <a href="https://index.scala-lang.org/search?platform=sbt2">Scaladex</a> lists <strong>172 plugins</strong> available for sbt 2.x. Many thanks for the community effort by volunteers like Kenji Yoshida and many others.</p>
167
168<p>In this post, I’d like to highlight some of the most notable plugin updates.</p>
169
170<h2 id="plugin-updates">Plugin updates</h2>
171
172<h3 id="scalajs-1220">Scala.js 1.22.0</h3>
173
174<p><a href="https://www.scala-js.org/news/2026/06/20/announcing-scalajs-1.22.0/">Scala.js 1.22.0</a> shipped with sbt 2.x support. Rikito Taniguchi (VirtusLab) sent <a href="https://github.com/scala-js/scala-js/pull/5314">scala-js#5314</a> on behalf of the sbt project to port the plugin to sbt 2.x.</p>
175
176<p><strong>Side note</strong>: A test included in the pull request mentions the fact that in sbt 2.x <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">%%%</code> operator is no longer needed, which is nice:</p>
177
178<div class="language-scala highlighter-rouge"><div class="highlight"><pre class="highlight"><code><span class="c1">// In sbt 2, %% resolves to the Scala.js artifact (scalajs-dom_sjs1_3)</span>
179<span class="c1">// for Scala.js projects. This replaces the %%% operator from sbt 1.</span>
180<span class="n">libraryDependencies</span> <span class="o">+=</span> <span class="s">"org.scala-js"</span> <span class="o">%%</span> <span class="s">"scalajs-dom"</span> <span class="o">%</span> <span class="s">"2.8.0"</span>
181</code></pre></div></div>
182
183<h3 id="sbt-matrix-sources-010">sbt-matrix-sources 0.1.0</h3>
184
185<p>There’s a new plugin for sbt 2.x called <a href="https://github.com/sbt/sbt-matrix-sources">sbt-matrix-sources</a>, created by <a href="https://github.com/kitbellew">Albert Meltzer</a>. This plugin adds <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">&lt;platform_part&gt;/src/main/&lt;language_part&gt;</code> to the source directory like <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">js/src/main/scala</code>. This provide an sbt-crossproject emulation on top of the project matrix to smooth out the sbt 2.x migration.</p>
186
187<h3 id="sbt-git-300-rc1">sbt-git 3.0.0-RC1</h3>
188
189<p><a href="https://github.com/sbt/sbt-git/releases/tag/v3.0.0-RC1">sbt-git 3.0.0-RC1</a> was published recently for sbt 1.x and 2.x. sbt-git 3.x features a shift to use system <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">git</code> by default as opposed to JGit. This was contributed by <a href="https://github.com/mkurz">Matthias Kurz</a>, from the Play framework project.</p>
190
191<h3 id="sbt-buildinfo-0132">sbt-buildinfo 0.13.2</h3>
192
193<p><a href="https://github.com/sbt/sbt-buildinfo/releases/tag/v0.13.2">sbt-buildinfo 0.13.2</a> was published recently for sbt 1.x and 2.x. sbt-buildinfo is a small code generator that I created a while back to give project code access to information in the build definition. sbt-buildinfo 0.13.2 features a bug fix contributed by <a href="https://github.com/lrytz">Lukas Rytz</a> (VirtusLab) that should avoid running the tasks out-of-graph on sbt 2.x.</p>
194
195<h3 id="sbt-github-actions-0320">sbt-github-actions 0.32.0</h3>
196
197<p><a href="https://github.com/sbt/sbt-github-actions/releases/tag/v0.32.0">sbt-github-actions 0.32.0</a> was released a few weeks ago for sbt 1.x and 2.x. sbt-github-actions generates GitHub Actions YAML files from the build. sbt-github-actions 0.32.0 features an update that I sent to use actions/setup-java v6.</p>
198
199<h3 id="sbt-assembly-250">sbt-assembly 2.5.0</h3>
200
201<p><a href="https://github.com/sbt/sbt-assembly/releases/tag/v2.5.0">sbt-assembly 2.5.0</a> was released a few weeks ago for sbt 1.x and 2.x. Recent contributions include an update to make shading errors fail the build, by <a href="https://github.com/stasimus">Stas Shevchenko</a> (Evolution), and artifact caching, by <a href="https://github.com/unkarjedy">Dmitrii Naumenko</a> (JetBrains).</p>
202
203<h3 id="sbt-salad-days-020">sbt-salad-days 0.2.0</h3>
204
205<p><a href="https://eed3si9n.com/reducing-scaladoc-file-size-with-sbt-salad-days/">sbt-salad-days</a> is a plugin I created to reduce the Scaladoc JAR size for Maven Central publishing. This is an interim solution while we wait for a fix to be merged upstream in various Scala versions.</p>
206
207<h3 id="sbt-site-180">sbt-site 1.8.0</h3>
208
209<p><a href="https://github.com/sbt/sbt-site/releases/tag/v1.8.0">sbt-site 1.8.0</a> was cross published for sbt 1.x and 2.x last month. sbt-site is an sbt plugin originally created by Josh Suereth to generate project websites. I sent <a href="https://github.com/sbt/sbt-site/pull/224">sbt-site#224</a> to cross build it.</p>
210
211<h3 id="sbt-testng-320">sbt-testng 3.2.0</h3>
212
213<p><a href="https://github.com/sbt/sbt-testng/releases/tag/v3.2.0">sbt-testng 3.2.0</a> was cross published for sbt 1.x. and 2.x recently. I’m not sure how popular testng is, but I sent <a href="https://github.com/sbt/sbt-testng/pull/30">sbt-testng#30</a> to aid Slick migrating to sbt 2.x.</p>
214
215<h3 id="sbt-pgp-232">sbt-pgp 2.3.2</h3>
216
217<p><a href="https://github.com/sbt/sbt-pgp/releases/tag/v2.3.2">sbt-pgp 2.3.2</a> was released last month for sbt 1.x and 2.x, with a fix to ensure compatibility with sbt 2.1.0.</p>
218
219<h2 id="towards-sbt-210--scala-390-lts">Towards sbt 2.1.0 + Scala 3.9.0 LTS</h2>
220
221<p>Recently we published <a href="https://eed3si9n.com/sbt-2.1.0-beta">sbt 2.1.0-M1</a>, kicking off the beta release of sbt 2.1.x series. Among the headline feature of sbt 2.1.0 is Scala 3.9.0 LTS on the metabuild. Since both 
221sbt 2.x and Scala 3.x are backward compatible, generally  existing plugins should continue to work.</p>
222
223<ol>
224  <li>Since sbt 2.1.0 removes Apache Ivy as its dependency, any plugins that were using internal Ivy code should migrate to using the LM API (available since sbt 1.0), which abstracts over Ivy and Coursier.</li>
225  <li>Since Scala 3.9.x will be better supported as Long Term Support (LTS), we should adopt it once sbt 2.1.0 becomes available. Until then, plugins must stick with Scala 3.8.x.</li>
226</ol>
227
228<h2 id="participation">Participation</h2>
229
230<p>The Scala Center has been entrusted with coordinating the commissioned Scala work for the Sovereign Tech Fund. The Scala Center is an independent, not-for-profit center sponsored by <a href="/blog/2023/09/11/scala-center-fundraising.html">corporate members and individual backers like you</a> to promote and facilitate Scala. If you would like to participate and/or see more of these types of efforts, please reach out to your manager to see if your company can donate engineering time or membership to the Scala Center.</p>
231
232<p>See <a href="/blog/2023/09/11/scala-center-fundraising.html">The Scala Center Fundraising Campaign</a> for more details.</p>
233
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