stuck at "Getting org.scala-sbt sbt 0.13.6 ..." when running sbt in terminal

Question

This is quite old post and my answer may not be completely relevant. But here is my experience:

1. I am using sbt 0.13.8
2. Getting org.scala-sbt sbt 0.13.8 ...
3. I have got this line hanging for some time - between 5 to 10 minutes.
4. And then it started to download stuff.

So my solution is that you have to wait a bit.

There is an update log ...

$ tail -f $HOME/.sbt/boot/update.log 

Execute the above command in another terminal to see the progress. Using -v option works as others already indicated as well.

I bypassed the error by adding a build.properties file under project folder, in which, I put:

  sbt.version=0.13.5

I think this probably is because my system has activator pre-installed instead of sbt, which is easier to work with play project. Not quite clear in the theory as I just start to use sbt.

It is downloading things, just use $ sbt -v, it will show logs.

I think sbt takes some time to download its jars when it is run first time. That is why it seems to be stuck. It works normal after the download is completed.

It's quite a late answer, but I encountered the same problem working behind a proxy. If this is your case, you should run export JAVA_OPTS="$JAVA_OPTS -Dhttp.proxyHost=<your-proxy> -Dhttp.proxyPort=<your-proxy-port>" before running sbt.

If you are still unsure if it's going ahead with the downloading, you should try launching sbt with the verbose option sbt -v, as suggested by @evan912. If you had a problem with the proxy, after setting it you should see some [info] downloading logging on your console.