scaladex-cli

You know some Scala. You want to try a library. But first you need to figure out the groupId, the artifact name, the latest version, whether it's %% or %%%, and which build tool syntax to use. By the time you've got the dependency string, you've lost your flow.

scaladex-cli fixes that. Search for a library, pick it from a list, and the dependency string lands in your clipboard (or straight into your file). No browser, no copy-pasting from Maven Central.

Install

Homebrew (recommended)

brew tap ghstrider/tap
brew install scaladex-cli

Shell script

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ghstrider/scaladex-cli/main/install.sh | sh

Works on macOS (Apple Silicon, Intel) and Linux x86_64.

Quick start

Search for a library and copy the dep to clipboard:

scaladex-cli search cats-core

Arrow keys to pick the project, artifacts, and version. The result gets copied to your clipboard automatically.

Add a dep directly into a scala-cli file:

scaladex-cli add -f app.scala cats-effect

Same interactive flow, but the //> using dep line gets inserted at the top of your file.

Don't want to start from scratch? Use a template:

scaladex-cli template cats-effect

This creates app.scala with the dep and a hello world you can run immediately:

scala-cli run app.scala

All commands

Command	What it does
search <query>	Interactive search, copies dep to clipboard
add <query>	Same as search. Use -f file.scala to inject into a file
dep <org/repo>	Print dep string (non-interactive, for scripting)
versions <org/repo>	List available versions
info <org/repo>	Show groupId, artifacts, and versions
changelog <org/repo>	Show recent GitHub release notes
template <name>	Generate a starter file (--list to see all)
completions <shell>	Shell completions for bash/zsh/fish
version	Print version

Flags

These work on search, add, and dep:

• -b, --build-tool <tool> — Output format: sbt, mill, scalacli, ammonite
• -s, --scala <version> — Scala version to target (default: 3)
• -t, --target <target> — Platform target (default: JVM)
• -v, --verbose — Show what's happening under the hood

Templates

scaladex-cli template --list

Available: hello, cats-effect, http4s, zio, fs2, scalatest, munit, os-lib, tapir

Each one creates a ready-to-run scala-cli file. Just scala-cli run <file>.

Shell completions

# zsh
scaladex-cli completions zsh > ~/.zfunc/_scaladex-cli

# bash
scaladex-cli completions bash >> ~/.bashrc

# fish
scaladex-cli completions fish > ~/.config/fish/completions/scaladex-cli.fish

How it works

It's a Scala Native binary — no JVM startup, instant response. It talks to the Scaladex API for library search and the GitHub API for changelogs. Terminal UI uses raw mode with ANSI escape codes for the arrow-key selection.

License

Apache 2.0