By Rachel Magruder

August was our first month with this new round of projects, check out their monthly update!

Shadow CLJS with Thomas Heller

Meander with Joel Holdbrooks

Calva with Peter Strömberg

CIDER with Bozhidar Batsov

Shadow CLJS

Released shadow-cljs versions 2.8.42 up to 2.8.51. Released shadow-cljs versions 2.8.52

Upgraded :target :react-native support

Changed the way the :react-native build target emits code so that during development source maps work in some limited fashion (ie. only when using Debug JS remotely in Chrome). This is meant to work around the limitation that metro itself currently has regarding source maps directly.

Enhanced the code processing so that js/require calls are automatically detected and don’t require any additional configuration. More info in the related discussion on Clojureverse.

Added the groundwork to allow code-splitting to work with react-native builds so that parts of the code can be loaded lazily when needed (to boost initial startup speed). The JS side of things is done but it also requires work on the react-native side as described here. Hope to create an actual working example of this in the future. I am looking for beta testers willing to dive into this.

Bugfixes/Features

Smoothed out some rough edges in the nREPL code which would not display compiler warnings when loading files via load-file or require properly

or properly Simplified the nREPL middleware setup, mostly for internal purposes. Will only require updating the middleware config when using embedded mode

Enhanced the macro reload logic: previously macro dependencies would not be watched and therefore would only trigger rebuilds when macros themselves were changed. This should now be more reliable since more namespaces are tracked

Introduced :js-package-dirs

Optimized the CLI parsing so everything coming after run|clj-run was passed to that directly instead of being interpreted as arguments for shadow-cljs itself (eg. shadow-cljs run your.helper/fn --foo would error out). Previously this required adding an additional -- separator after run

would error out). Previously this required adding an additional separator after removed log spam if CLJ macro namespaces were renamed or deleted

[ongoing] cleaning up the internal REPL implementation

Documentation

Started a section about Publishing Libraries using Leiningen

Started a section about REPL troubleshooting

Added a brief section about :jvm-opts

Blogged about Hot Reload in ClojureScript

Meander

Much of the work I’ve been doing is getting the new version of Meander, epsilon, ready for release. This has involved numerous internal architectural changes, bug fixes, and documentation additions.

One of the most important changes to the library was to qualify (namespace) the core pattern matching and pattern substitution operators such as and , or , scan , etc. Prior to epsilon these operators were available via their unqualified symbols. This led to some friction for folks. From now forward, beginning with epsilon, these operators will be fully qualified and available from the namespace meander.epsilon .

With qualified operators I also further developed a syntax extension mechanism which allows for controlled extension of the pattern matching and/or substitution syntax. This will also be available from the meander.epsilon namespace as defsyntax . This macro allows new symbolic, syntax to be defined.

With the syntax extension and definition mechanism in place, I was able to begin working on real documentation. Because the defsyntax macro compiles to code which emits a defn , which in turn compiles to code which emits a def , we can attach real meta data such as :doc and :arglists to the vars. So now, not only can we define operators via the provided extension mechanism, we can also document them. And thats exactly what I spent a good deal of time doing. To date, I’ve fully documented all but two operators and I expect those will be documented during the week.

Apart from the operator qualification and documentation efforts, Meanders epsilon branch also received several bug fixes to the improvement of the pattern matching compiler. Meanders Clojure spec definitions have also been given attention and mistakes preventing the use of instrumentation have now been corrected.

Another small but (hopefully) useful addition is the allowance of the search operator to return results in breadth first order. Prior to this option, results were always returned in depth first order. I anticipate the further allowance of configuration to search in the future.

Within the week I plan to release Meander epsilon. During the weeks ahead I intended to aggressively enhance the pattern matching and substitution compilers, put in place infrastructure for guides and tutorials, and begin putting together a rewrite specific compiler if time permits.

Since the last update the epsilon branch of the project has seen a few important improvements and fixes. The two primary improvements have been to pattern matching and to substitution.

For map pattern matching, keys can be logic variables if Meander can determine that the pattern could not have more than one solution. For example, if we know that we have an already solved for a logic variable earlier on in a pattern match, it may be used as a key in the map. This improvement also had transitive effects to our code generation for searching as well. Previously, if a map had logic variables keys we emitted search code regardless. This meant that in some cases we were producing code that was doing more work than necessary.

For substitution, code generation has also been improved as Meander is employing a different approach. We’re now emitting much smarter, faster, and in some cases (dramatically) shorter code. To do this, the substitution compiler collects and returns data as it compiles so that at each point in the compilation there is an accumulation of knowledge which can be used to make better decisions. The generated code is also subsequently optimized by rewriting it to eliminate redundant code by applying functional identities.

Calva

August 1 - 15

Theme: Project Maintanbility

This has many aspects, including: Cooperation with other tool smiths, Code factoring, User documentation, and Ease of use.

Orchard task force

Since CIDER and Calva are sharing a lot of the tooling, we have been trying to figure out how to pool our efforts into The Orchard. Bozhidar Batsov has formed a task force with people building libraries and tools for, and/or using, Orchard related things. Kevin and I have joined from the Calva team and we now try to apply an Orchard first mindset when designing how to add certain features.

So far, a concrete improvement to Calva out of this is that when helping to test a new version of cider-nrepl , which adds code completion of JavaScript interop powered by suitable, we realized that Calva isn’t taking full advantage of the completion features provided. Next release of Calva will: NEXT RELEASE Use top level form context when collecting code completion candidates_.

, which adds code completion of JavaScript interop powered by suitable, we realized that Calva isn’t taking full advantage of the completion features provided. Next release of Calva will:

Documentation

The Calva wiki has gotten some needed attention. (All too little still, but anyway.)

A video showing how to Jack in using a Custom CLJS REPL. This was mainly an experiment to try to learn some about how to produce tutorial videos.

Some features are being added documentation first, meaning we write the user documentation for the feature first and use that to know what needs to be done. See below for an example. We intend to continue with this habit.

Refactoring Calva

We’re preparing for making some major cleanings up of the Calva code base. And even while we have yet to start any of those efforts we are already cleaing up while we are working with updating Calva. This means the project is more maintanable now than it was two weeks ago, and we intend to continue in this spirit of Kaizen. A more drastical change is that we: * DONE: Moved all REPL Window code into the Calva repository and archived the repl-interactor repository for now.

Jack in/Connect

We’ve continued with the strong focus on making it easy to connect Calva to your Clojure project.

RELEASED : https://github.com/BetterThanTomorrow/calva/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md#2028---01082019 Operating system peculiarities. Especially Windows, with its cmd.exe and Powershell and Git Bash and MINGW and WSL and… You get the picture. Jack-in has been really hard to get working reliably, but I think we got it nailed down now. (There is still some bugs on Linux, that we have yet to figure out.)

: https://github.com/BetterThanTomorrow/calva/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md#2028---01082019 Operating system peculiarities. Especially Windows, with its cmd.exe and Powershell and Git Bash and MINGW and WSL and… You get the picture. Jack-in has been really hard to get working reliably, but I think we got it nailed down now. (There is still some bugs on Linux, that we have yet to figure out.) RELEASED : Reworked how Calva deals with figuring out the current project root. This used to be a setting in the workspace, but now it is determined based on the file in the active editor. This change also made it easier to use multi-project workspaces (Mainly because of suporting custom settings per project in the workspace).

: Reworked how Calva deals with figuring out the current project root. This used to be a setting in the workspace, but now it is determined based on the file in the active editor. This change also made it easier to use multi-project workspaces (Mainly because of suporting custom settings per project in the workspace). RELEASED : Support launching with Leiningen aliases, while also improving how we deal with main arguments when launcing with deps.edn aliases.

: Support launching with Leiningen aliases, while also improving how we deal with arguments when launcing with aliases. IN PROGRESS : Support for launcing with user alieses/profiles. A test build with this feature is out and it is probably going to be release within a few days.

: Support for launcing with user alieses/profiles. A test build with this feature is out and it is probably going to be release within a few days. IN PROGRESS : Support of custom Jack-in and connect sequences. This is taking the recently added Custom CLJS REPL feature several steps further. It is done in a documentation first manner. This also cleans up a lot of all too complicated code as we are redefining the built-in connect sequences using the same configuration mechanism as the custom ones.

: Support of custom Jack-in and connect sequences. This is taking the recently added Custom CLJS REPL feature several steps further. It is done in a documentation first manner. This also cleans up a lot of all too complicated code as we are redefining the built-in connect sequences using the same configuration mechanism as the custom ones. IN PROGRESS: Custom workflow CLojure commands. This is a feature insspired from Cursive that has been worked with on and off for quite a while. Right now it is more on and it might be released before August ends.

Refactoring tooling

We’ve investigated our options for adding refactoring tools.

Using nrepl-refactor to add a Clean namespace form feature is going to get included in Calva soon. But Find symbol references, seems a bit farther away yet. It is being discussed within that Orchard task force.

to add a Clean namespace form feature is going to get included in Calva soon. But Find symbol references, seems a bit farther away yet. It is being discussed within that Orchard task force. Experiment with `clojure-lsp. Which reveals that a lot of functionality is ready to be tapped by Calva from clojure-lsp

Various

DONE : Calva Legacy was removed from the VS Code Extension Marketplace, along with Calva Paredit and Calva Formatter. Maintainability bliss.

: Calva Legacy was removed from the VS Code Extension Marketplace, along with Calva Paredit and Calva Formatter. Maintainability bliss. RELEASED: Quite a few bug fixes.

August 15 - 31

Theme: Project Maintanbility - through ease of use

Jack-in and Connect Sequences

We want to try help contribute to the community such that fewer Clojure and ClojureScript projects out there need to specify their editor tooling dependencies and setup. To this end Calva has a Jack-in feature that supports the most common project types and cljs repl types. It also supports customizing the cljs repl configuration so that projects with special cljs types can use Jack in as well. But there are still too many projects out there not supported by Calva Jack in, and this is what we have been working on almost solely.

We are adding something we call Connect Sequences, more on that below. When this is released we will be able to say we enabled the following:

Support for configuring custom connect seqences. These can be: Clojure only, supporting Leiningen, Clojure CLI, and shadow-cljs. Clojure + ClojureScript, supporting Figwheel Main, shadow-cljs, Nashorn, lein-figwheel, and fully customized cljs repl types.

Much improved custom cljs repl configuration.

Improved help for the user to get the cljs repl connected.

Improved ClojureScript Build switching. (Since Calva only allows for two REPL connections (yet), one for Clojure and one for ClojureScript. It instead makes it easy to attach the ClojureScript repl connection to different ClojureScript builds in your project.)

A feature to add custom Clojure code to be evaluated when the Clojure repl has been attached. Maybe your project needs to start a web server before attempting to start a web client and connect a ClojureScript repl?

All built in ClojureScript repls are written using the custom repl type configuration. (This is a huge win when it comes to maintainability.)

Nashorn added as a built in ClojureScript repl type.

Support for launching with user alieses/profiles

Except for the last one, this all works in development, and we are cleaning up the code and considering to add this additional feature, before release:

No-prompting Jack-in. A way to ”answer” all Jack-in prompts as part of the custom Connect Sequence configuration.

The custom Connect Sequence feature is developed documentation first. And you can follow the commits in this PR. (The reason there is awfully little feedback there, is because that happens offline).

Other

Other than jack-in, time has been spent mostly in support and general talking to users. Plus:

RELEASED Use top level form context when collecting code completion candidates_.

Use top level form context when collecting code completion candidates_. DONE Insourced the REPL Window (npm) repository into the Calva code base. Since Calva is the only project using it. This might be extracted again if someone turns up willing to maintain it as a project of its own.

Insourced the REPL Window (npm) repository into the Calva code base. Since Calva is the only project using it. This might be extracted again if someone turns up willing to maintain it as a project of its own. DONE Refactored the updated completion context some, to make the code easier to understand.

Refactored the updated completion context some, to make the code easier to understand. IN PROGRESS: Support for launching with user alieses/profiles. Test results in and it seems to be a useful implementation. However, we are now moving this configuration into the new Jack-in and connect sequences feature. (See above.)

CIDER