How to Force sbt to Compile and Run Files in UTF-8

A simple way is to configure an environment variable to add an option to JAVA_TOOL_OPTIONS.

For example:

export JAVA_TOOL_OPTIONS="-Dfile.encoding=UTF8"

On Windows, you can add an environment variable with the key JAVA_TOOL_OPTIONS and the value "-Dfile.encoding=UTF8".

On *nix, you can write it in a config file such as

export JAVA_TOOL_OPTIONS=$JAVA_TOOL_OPTIONS" -Dfile.encoding=UTF8 "
sbt compile run

Or you can set it at startup like this:

env JAVA_TOOL_OPTIONS=$JAVA_TOOL_OPTIONS" -Dfile.encoding=UTF8 " sbt compile run

The difference between the two is that the former keeps the JAVA_TOOL_OPTIONS environment variable for the current session. You can write the "export xxx" line directly in a config file such as ~/.bash_profile, ~/.bashrc, etc., so it runs each time the shell starts.

The latter only uses the environment variable for the current command.