“sbt launcher does not exist” when attempting to open sbt project in Intellij

Question

Here is an attempt to open an sbt project in Intellij 2016.3 ultimate:

We are greeted with the following friendly notification:

Afa sbt details: I have installed sbt via homebrew and

That path truly does not exist. So I went to Preferences | Build Execution Deployment | SBT to fix the path:

$ll /usr/local/Cellar/sbt/0.13.13/libexec/sbt-launch.jar
-rwxr-xr-x  1 boescst  USWIN\Domain Users  1210231 Oct 28 10:46 /usr/local/Cellar/sbt/0.13.13/libexec/sbt-launch.jar

Let' update the path:

However the same error message still occurs. Is there some other place in Intellij that needs to be updated?

The following happened when trying to import an sbt project:

The following dialog has a Show Logs link but clicking on it does nothing ..

Another update I opened the idea.log manually. It shows basically same information:

2017-01-04 18:07:21,280 [ 34384] WARN - nal.AbstractExternalSystemTask - SBT launcher does not exist: /usr/local/Cellar/sbt/0.13.9/libexec/sbt-launch.jar com.intellij.openapi.externalSystem.model.ExternalSystemException: SBT launcher does not exist: /usr/local/Cellar/sbt/0.13.9/libexec/sbt-launch.jar at org.jetbrains.sbt.project.SbtProjectResolver.resolveProjectInfo(SbtProjectResolver.scala:61) at org.jetbrains.sbt.project.SbtProjectResolver.resolveProjectInfo(SbtProjectResolver.scala:28) at com.intellij.openapi.externalSystem.service.remote.RemoteExternalSystemProjectResolverImpl.a(RemoteExternalSystemProjectResolverImpl.java:37) at com.intellij.openapi.externalSystem.service.remote.AbstractRemoteExternalSystemService.execute(AbstractRemoteExternalSystemService.java:59) at com.intellij.openapi.externalSystem.service.remote.RemoteExternalSystemProjectResolverImpl.resolveProjectInfo(RemoteExternalSystemProjectResolverImpl.java:37) at com.intellij.openapi.externalSystem.service.remote.wrapper.ExternalSystemProjectResolverWrapper.resolveProjectInfo(ExternalSystemProjectResolverWrapper.java:49) at com.intellij.openapi.externalSystem.service.internal.ExternalSystemResolveProjectTask.doExecute(ExternalSystemResolveProjectTask.java:51) at com.intellij.openapi.externalSystem.service.internal.AbstractExternalSystemTask.execute(AbstractExternalSystemTask.java:139) at com.intellij.openapi.externalSystem.service.internal.AbstractExternalSystemTask.execute(AbstractExternalSystemTask.java:125) at com.intellij.openapi.externalSystem.util.ExternalSystemUtil$3.execute(ExternalSystemUtil.java:414) at com.intellij.openapi.externalSystem.util.ExternalSystemUtil$4.run(ExternalSystemUtil.java:486) at com.intellij.openapi.progress.impl.CoreProgressManager$TaskRunnable.run(CoreProgressManager.java:710) at com.intellij.openapi.progress.impl.CoreProgressManager$11.run(CoreProgressManager.java:423) at com.intellij.openapi.progress.impl.CoreProgressManager$3.run(CoreProgressManager.java:179) at com.intellij.openapi.progress.impl.CoreProgressManager.a(CoreProgressManager.java:568) at com.intellij.openapi.progress.impl.CoreProgressManager.executeProcessUnderProgress(CoreProgressManager.java:519) at com.intellij.openapi.progress.impl.ProgressManagerImpl.executeProcessUnderProgress(ProgressManagerImpl.java:54) at com.intellij.openapi.progress.impl.CoreProgressManager.runProcess(CoreProgressManager.java:164) at com.intellij.openapi.application.impl.ApplicationImpl.a(ApplicationImpl.java:569) at com.intellij.openapi.application.impl.ApplicationImpl$2.run(ApplicationImpl.java:309) at java.util.concurrent.Executors$RunnableAdapter.call(Executors.java:511) at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(FutureTask.java:266) at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1142) at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:617) at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:745) java.io.FileNotFoundException: SBT launcher does not exist: /usr/local/Cellar/sbt/0.13.9/libexec/sbt-launch.ja

I have repeatedly tried changing the sbt launch settings. The error still occurs. Intellij is caching that information somewhere. I've even deleted the .idea and .iml files. Same result. Now I have reinstalled Intellij . Still same issue! What the heck !!!???

This is the correct setting, and I can't reproduce your problem with identical settings. However, using the bundled sbt launcher should work fine as well. Is there a reason it doesn't work for you? — Justin Kaeser
Thx for asking: Using the "bundled" sbt is where I started from - i.e. generating the error message shown. I changed to custom to try to fix the issue -but in both cases same error. — WestCoastProjects
Can you please link a paste of the IDE log from when the error happens? — Justin Kaeser
@JustinKaeser The link provided to the Show logs is not working (see the dialog screenshot added to the OP). — WestCoastProjects
Thanks for the update. No idea what's going on here, but one thing you can try is File / Invalidate chaches and restart. Though that probably won't do much if a reinstallation didn't work either. — Justin Kaeser

jsh jsh · Accepted Answer · 2018-09-05T20:39:29

For Launcher, in preference window, pick "Bundled" option instead of custom.

“sbt launcher does not exist” when attempting to open sbt project in Intellij

1 Answers