Setting current working directory when executing a shell process

Question

I would like to call sbt update within my source-code, to update multiple sbt projects. In the shell this is easy:

cd /path/to/project && sbt update 

But if I use scala.sys.process within my code, it won't remember the cd therefore sbt is called in the wrong directory. Code like this:

import scala.sys.process._ ("cd /path/to/project" #&& "sbt update").!! 

And I didn't find in the documentation any possibility to set sbt's project path via console. It would be nice if something like this works:

"sbt -projectPath /path/to/project update".!! 

If something like that is possible, this would save me a lot of mess! (Especially that it runs on UNIX and Windows.)

Answer 1

Use one of the ProcessBuilder factory methods on the Process object:

sys.process.Process(Seq("sbt","update"), new java.io.File("/path/to/project")).!! 

For more documentation, see the scaladoc file for the sys.process package. Unfortunately, it does not mention the 'current working directory' arguments, but they are in the documentation of object Process.