You can manage the complete development cycle of a Play application with sbt.
/to build and run Play, change to the directory of your project and run:
sbt run
To launch sbt in the interactive mode, change into the top-level of your project and enter sbt with no arguments:
sbt
In development mode sbt launches Play with the auto-reload feature enabled. When you make a request, Play will automatically recompile and restart your server if any files have changed. If needed the application will restart automatically.
run
You can also compile your application without running the HTTP server. The compile command displays any application errors in the command window.
compile
You can run tests without running the server. For example, in interactive mode, use the test command:
test
Type console to enter the Scala console, which allows you to test your code interactively:
console
You can also use sbt features such as triggered execution.
~ compile
~test
~run