Installation & Tooling

2.1 Install via Coursier (recommended)

Download and run cs-x86_64-pc-win32.zip from the Coursier releases page, then cs setup, or:

cs setup installs a JDK (if needed), scala, scalac, sbt, scala-cli, scalafmt, and more.

brew install coursier && coursier setup

curl -fL https://github.com/coursier/coursier/releases/latest/download/cs-x86_64-pc-linux.gz | gzip -d > cs && chmod +x cs && ./cs setup

winget install VirtusLab.ScalaCLI

scala --version
java -version

2.2 The tools

scala (scala-cli) run scripts, REPL, compile, package (Scala 3.5+ uses scala-cli as the scala command) the standard build tool alternative fast build tool linter & refactoring tool language server (VS Code, Neovim, Emacs, Sublime) cs (Coursier) artifact fetching, app installer, JVM manager

2.3 Editors

IntelliJ IDEA + Scala plugin — the most popular IDE.

VS Code + Metals extension.

Neovim (nvim-metals), Emacs (lsp-metals), Zed.

2.4 JDK versions

Scala 3 runs on JDK 8+ (recent versions recommend JDK 17 or 21 LTS). Use cs java --jvm 21 --setup to switch.