play framework installation

Question

I am trying to install play framework 2.0.1 on ubuntu 11. I have added the path to play in ubuntu, I have SUN JRE 1.6 configured (java/javac) and I have given read/write/execute privileges to the play script. However, I am still getting the error copied below when I run 'play help' - is the play directory supposed to only contain 'documentation', 'repository', 'framework' & 'samples' subdirectories or should it contain additional subdirectories as well. Any helpful suggestions would be welcome.

java.io.IOException: No such file or directory
at java.io.UnixFileSystem.createFileExclusively(Native Method)
at java.io.File.createNewFile(File.java:900)
at xsbt.boot.Locks$.apply0(Locks.scala:34)
at xsbt.boot.Locks$.apply(Locks.scala:27)
at scala.collection.mutable.FlatHashTable$class.$init$(Proxy.scala:32)
at xsbt.boot.Launch$ScalaProvider.<init>(Launch.scala:110)
at xsbt.boot.Launch$$anonfun$1.apply(Launch.scala:84)
at org.apache.ivy.plugins.namespace.NamespaceRule.newEntry(Cache.scala:17)
at org.apache.ivy.plugins.namespace.NamespaceRule.apply(Cache.scala:12)
at xsbt.boot.Launch.getScala(Launch.scala:86) 
at xsbt.boot.Launch$.run(Launch.scala:49)
at xsbt.boot.Launch$$anonfun$explicit$1.apply(Launch.scala:43)
at xsbt.boot.Launch$.launch(Launch.scala:68)
at xsbt.boot.Launch$.apply(Launch.scala:14)
at xsbt.boot.Boot$.runImpl(Boot.scala:25)
at xsbt.boot.Boot$.main(Boot.scala:15)
at xsbt.boot.Boot.main(Boot.scala)
Error during sbt execution: java.io.IOException: No such file or directory

Answer 1

If you really want to run play in opt on your dev machine, you would probably want to chown /opt to yourself.

sudo chown yourself:yourself /opt

I don't believe this makes sense and has implications to other things in /opt and to the usual purpose of the /opt directory. Unlike typical web server environments, play has an embedded server (like nodejs). In addition, as noted before, there is a heck of a lot of file generation when you prepare a project to run. For development, I think it is always best install play in a directory you own by default like your home directory. In production, you would install and start everything as root making /opt a viable option. Also, in windows using directories requiring administrative access would require as much, if not more, unwise change. Play does not officially support windows in production mode.

Answer 2

If you check the documentation you will see this warning:

extract the archive to a location where you have both read and write access (...) Running play writes some files to directories within the archive, so don’t install to /opt, /usr/local or anywhere else you’d need special permission to write to.