shadow-cljs

Implementing shadow.remote API

Since version 0.8.0 of Chlorine, there’s a new way to evaluate ClojureScript code: that’s the Shadow-CLJS Remote API. It is basically a new REPL (not nREPL, no Socket REPL) over WebSockets to try to solve problems when translating other REPLs to ClojureScript. So, to understand why these problems exist, I’ll first introduce the difference between ClojureScript and Clojure.

On Clojure, you’re always inside a JVM. This means that compilation happens on the same JVM that your REPL, and your code is running. If you practice REPL-Driven Development, even your tests are running on the same JVM. In practical terms, it means that when you fire up your REPL, you already have everything ready to run code, compile code, and evaluate forms.

On ClojureScript, the compiler is written in Clojure – that means it’s running on the JVM. So, to produce Javascript code you don’t need a Javascript environment – and that’s when things become confusing, because when exactly will you run the REPL? Let’s try from another angle: if you start the REPL on compilation time, you can’t evaluate code (because there’s no Javascript generated, nor any Javascript engine running). If you start the REPL when you run the compiled code, this REPL can become unusable if you stop the Javascript environment, and also you have to coordinate lots of state and translations between formats.
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By Maurício Szabo, ago

My Atom editor configuration for working with Clojure/Script, revisited

Sometime ago, I did a post on how I work with Atom to develop Clojure and ClojureScript projects. It is in Portuguese, so I’m gonna re-visit the subject and also update with my current workflow.

There are two packages that I have to install to work with Clojure: lisp-paredit and chlorine. Without lisp-paredit, when I start a newline, the indentation gets all sorts of problematic. I use it on “strict mode” and use the tools to slurp/barf forward only. As for chlorine, it is needed to have autocomplete, evaluation, show documentation, goto var definition and so on. Last, I use also parinfer so I can remove whole lines of text and parinfer will infer the correct closing of parenthesis for me (most of the time at least).

Now, how exactly do I work with Clojure? When you use lein or boot, you’ll get a nREPL port. This is not the port you use with Chlorine, so I need a bit more of work. I can’t just start a REPL with lein repl or clj, I need to inform the tool to open a socket-repl server. The JVM option needed is: '-Dclojure.server.myrepl={:port,5555,:accept,clojure.core.server/repl}'. So, the commands below are what I use with lein or clj:

JAVA_OPTS='-Dclojure.server.myrepl={:port,5555,:accept,clojure.core.server/repl}' lein repl

or

clj -J'-Dclojure.server.myrepl={:port,5555,:accept,clojure.core.server/repl}'

This will open a REPL at port 5555 (or I can change the port if necessary). Then, it’s time to fire up the Atom’s command palette and select “Connect Clojure Socket REPL”, put 5555 on the port, and connect. Then, I’ll use “Refresh Namespaces” or “Load file” command to load my latest version of code into the REPL, and start working.
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By Maurício Szabo, ago

My fading frustration with ClojureScript

I’ve talked about at another post on how ClojureScript frustrates me, mostly because I was doing some Node.JS work and Figwheel simply wasn’t working correctly. Now, it’s time to revisit these points:

A little update: I talked a little with Thomas Heller, Shadow-CLJS creator, and he pointed me some issues with this article, so I’ll update it acordingly

Tooling

Figwheel and Lein are not the best tools to work with ClojureScript. Since I discovered shadow-cljs, things are working way better than before: I can reload ClojureScript code from any target, and I’m even experimenting with Hubot (and it works really fine too). The only thing I’m missing is my profiles.clj file, but I can live with that (and I can always use Shadow with Lein if I need profiles.clj).

Also, I’m working on a new package for Atom (and in the future, for another editors too) called Chlorine. One of the ideas is to offer better ClojureScript support (we have Autocomplete now!), using Socket REPL for solutions (even self-hosted REPLs like Lumo and Plank) and even wrap UNREPL protocol in Clojure. So far, is still in the very beginning but things are looking promising!

The stack

Forget Figwheel at all: Shadow-CLJS is probably the best tooling for ClojureScript ever. It auto-reloads ClojureScript code for the browser, for node.js, for node modules, and it integrates with almost everything that you want. It controls release optimizations, have sensible defaults, and even have post-compile hooks (so you can hook Clojure code to do something after some compilation phases). Also, it integrates with node-modules (no more maven-wrappers for JS libraries!) and have some warnings when you use some kind of ClojureScript code that would break :advanced compilation. And, let’s not forget that you can control the refresh reload phase, it adds a userful :include-macros in ns form (that will include all macros from the namespace being required), and controls exports in a sane manner. But first let’s begin with the feature that I found most useful: :before-load-async.
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By Maurício Szabo, ago

Atom packages with ClojureScript – upgraded

Last time I talked about plug-ins in atom with ClojureScript, I was using Weasel. Since then, I tried figwheel but it never worked as good as I wanted.

Then, I’ve decided to try shadow-cljs. Also, with shadow, we can build a node library instead of a “generic node application”, and this helped a lot in my current tests. So, right now, I’m going to show how I am developing the next version of Clojure Plus plug-in, and what to expect in the future.

Also, I must add that this is so far the best experience ever on creating Atom packages, so I’ll probably stick with ClojureScript for every future package too (I just need a way to make atom’s spec tests work better with ClojureScript – I’m thinking about using a helper library or something).

Preparation

First, you’ll use atom to create a package. It doesn’t matter if you produce a CoffeeScript or Javascript version, because we’ll delete all source files.

On package.json, we’ll modify the entrypoint: on the key "main":..., we’ll write "main": "./lib/main".
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By Maurício Szabo, ago