What are activator and activator-launch-1.2.10.jar files in a new project with playframework2.0?

Question

I am currently doing the official playframework tutorial : https://www.playframework.com/documentation/2.3.x/Tutorials. The tutorial recommends to use activator tool by Typesafe. I don't understand why I get another activator file when I create a new project.

When I create a project with the following command line :

activator new test-app play-java

My terminal displays:

Fetching the latest list of templates...

OK, application "test-app" is being created using the "play-java" template.

To run "test-app" from the command line, "cd test-app" then:
/Users/XXXXX/Documents/Developpements/play-sandbox/test-app/activator run

To run the test for "test-app" from the command line, "cd test-app" then:
/Users/XXXXX/Documents/Developpements/play-sandbox/test-app/activator test

To run the Activator UI for "test-app" from the command line, "cd test-app" then:
/Users/XXXXX/Documents/Developpements/play-sandbox/test-app/activator ui

I can observe this in test-app directory :

    442  1 oct 01:01 .
    238  1 oct 01:01 ..
    141  1 oct 01:01 .gitignore
    591  1 oct 01:01 LICENSE
    148  1 oct 01:01 README
   9680  1 oct 01:01 activator
1188339  1 oct 01:01 activator-launch-1.2.10.jar
    136  1 oct 01:01 app
    215  1 oct 01:01 build.sbt
    136  1 oct 01:01 conf
    136  1 oct 01:01 project
    170  1 oct 01:01 public
    136  1 oct 01:01 test

I don't understand the aim of activator and activator-launch-1.2.10.jar. When I delete these files and I use the activator command line it seems to work perfectly.

Are they important ? Can I delete them ? Should I include them in my .gitignore file ?

Thanks !

Answer 1

You can safely delete them.

Their purpose is to allow running the application without installing activator. For example, if you were to check them into source control, and then someone else cloned the repo, they could run those scripts instead of installing activator to run the project. This can also be quite an advantage on CI systems when you don't necessarily have access to the system to install new software. But they are only generated for convenience, deleting them is fine.