CI/CD for Play Framework with GitHub Actions

Test and stage your Play Framework app for a clean deploy.

Play Framework runs on the JVM with sbt as the build tool for Scala projects. The sbt stage task produces a runnable distribution. This recipe runs tests and stages the app for deploy.

What the pipeline does

set up the JDK
set up sbt with caching
run tests with sbt test
build a runnable dist with sbt stage
deploy the staged output

The workflow

sbt/setup-sbt installs sbt and setup-java with cache: sbt caches the ivy and coursier caches. sbt stage emits target/universal/stage.

.github/workflows/ci.yml

name: CI
on:
  push:
    branches: [main]
  pull_request:
jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - uses: actions/setup-java@v4
        with:
          distribution: temurin
          java-version: 21
          cache: sbt
      - uses: sbt/setup-sbt@v1
      - run: sbt test
      - run: sbt stage
      - uses: actions/upload-artifact@v4
        with:
          name: play-dist
          path: target/universal/stage

Caching and speed

cache: sbt restores the coursier and ivy caches so dependency resolution is fast. Scala compilation is notoriously CPU-heavy, so the compile and test steps dominate; cheaper managed runners such as Latchkey (around 69% cheaper than GitHub-hosted) make a real dent and auto-retry transient resolver failures.

Deploying

sbt stage produces target/universal/stage with a bin/ launch script; run it on a JVM host or copy it into a container. sbt dist builds a zip you can deploy instead. Configure the app with -Dconfig.resource or environment variables per environment.

Key takeaways

sbt stage builds a runnable distribution.
cache: sbt restores the coursier and ivy caches.
Scala compilation benefits most from faster cores.