.sbtconfig is deprecated
Most convenient way of setting JVM flags for SBT was to create a ~/.sbtconfig file. My file looked like this:
Starting from SBT 0.13.6 .sbtconfig file is deprecated. You probably could see this log message in a console when SBT starts:
Use of ~/.sbtconfig is deprecated, please migrate global settings to /usr/local/etc/sbtopts
Things became a bit more complicated now. There are a few solutions to this:
Create .sbtopts file in root of your SBT project
Syntax is weird but that’s what we have to use now. Each -X flag has to be prefixed with -J. Debugger port has to be set with completely new flag. You can check what else has changed in sbt-launcher file.
Edit /usr/local/etc/sbtopts file
Take the above file and paste it at the bottom of /usr/local/etc/sbtopts. That’s it. This configuration will be used in all SBT projects.
Other options
Check this file: sbt-launcher. You will find a few more ways of configuring SBT.