Dependency management

Running most of the examples in this book will not require any additional dependencies in terms of special libraries. In some cases, though, we might need to show how a Scala code is unit tested, which will require us to use a testing framework. Also, we will later present some real-life use cases in which an additional library is used. Dealing with dependencies nowadays is done using specialized tools. They usually are interchangeable, and which one to use is a personal choice. The most popular tool used with Scala projects is SBT, but Maven is also an option, and there are many others out there as well. The former is normally used when a project is started from scratch and Scala is the main programming language. The latter could be useful in cases when the main language used is Java, for example, and we want to add modules written in Scala.

Modern IDEs provide the functionality to generate the required build configuration files, but we will give some generic examples that could be useful not only here, but in future projects. Depending on the IDE you prefer, you might need to install some extra plugins to have things up and running, and a quick Google search should help.