The new tools.deps.alpha and command line tools are focused differently. They are specifically for creating classpath and launching Clojure programs, so do not

The new tools.deps.alpha and command line tools are focused differently. They are specifically for creating classpath and launching Clojure programs, so do not cover use cases of building or deploying artifacts - for that you should still use a build tool like Leiningen or Boot. (But those tools may actually be able to use tools.deps.alpha.) However, tools.deps.alpha doesn't restrict itself to a Maven-artifact-only dependency system. It supports an open system of coordinate and provider types of which Maven is one, but also local (no-artifact) dependencies, local jars, and eventually others as well (like using projects directly from Github). All of that vision is not done yet but it will enable many new capabilities. Clojure is a language that runs code from Clojure source files. It does not inherently require "building" or "deploying" anything. Those are useful tools to interoperate with the Java ecosystem, but we should not limit ourselves to only that means of program building.