scala-runtime-manifest generates untyped scala.reflect.Manifest[_] instances at runtime. While this is most important for in Scala 2.10, the project is cross built for Scala 2.10, 2.11 and 2.12 in the case that more recent code based on 2.11+ is using "legacy" reflection code.

This can be useful in situations when a Manifest needs to be created outside of Scala compiler, for instance in interop code. An example would be Java calling a Scala library whose API requires a Manifest. Typically, this is somewhat of a pain but this little library makes it easy to produce a Manifest. It's also useful for configuration in Spring.

This library could have used toolboxes but they were avoided because of some of the thread-safety bugs in Scala 2.10. Instead the library is based on parser combinators and making calls to the Manifest classes directly. Hopefully this will avoid an thread-safety bugs. See the test work correctly when called in parallel.

// In your build.sbt
libraryDependencies ++= Seq(
  "com.github.deaktator" %% "scala-runtime-manifest" % "1.0.0"
)

OR

<!-- In Maven pom.xml -->
<dependency>
  <groupId>com.github.deaktator</groupId>
  <artifactId>scala-runtime-manifest_2.10</artifactId> <!-- OR _2.11 OR _2.12 -->
  <version>1.0.0</version>
</dependency>

import deaktator.reflect.runtime.manifest.ManifestParser

val compilerGeneratedManifest = manifest[Seq[String]]

// Manifest on the right if successful.
// Error message are on the left if a failure occurred.
val parsed: Either[String, Manifest[_]] =
  ManifestParser.parse("scala.collection.Seq[java.lang.String]")

// For expository purposes.
parsed match {
  case Right(runtimeGeneratedManifest) =>
    assert(runtimeGeneratedManifest == compilerGeneratedManifest, "Should be the same.")
  case Left(errorMessage) =>
    assert(false, s"Failed with message: $errorMessage")
}