4 ms·

Clojure and Deps.edn: A basic guide

138 points by tomekw 7y ago

geospeck 7y ago
In addition to the post I will add here a nice video[1] that was recently uploaded from the very well known in Clojure community Sean Corfield which demonstrates the functionality and power of Deps.edn. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWjUccpFvrg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWjUccpFvrg
- tomekw 7y ago
  Thanks!
- millettjon 7y ago
  Sean also goes into his experience with boot vs tools.cli on the defn podcast https://soundcloud.com/defn-771544745/51-sean-corfield-aka-seancorfield https://soundcloud.com/defn-771544745/51-sean-corfield-aka-s...
danpeddle 7y ago
deps support in cursive is excellent, just as an aside. Feels very slick to get a project going. https://cursive-ide.com/userguide/deps.html https://cursive-ide.com/userguide/deps.html
- tomekw 7y ago
  True. This project was created with Cursive :)
dimovich 7y ago
What I really like about deps.edn is the ability to add git repos and also local projects as deps. Makes forking and testing libraries a charm. Another wonderful tutorial about using deps.edn that contains additional tips for Emacs -- https://cjohansen.no/tools-deps-figwheel-main-devcards-emacs/ https://cjohansen.no/tools-deps-figwheel-main-devcards-emacs...
- elwell 7y ago
  If using lein, there's this: https://github.com/reifyhealth/lein-git-down https://github.com/reifyhealth/lein-git-down
geokon 7y ago
thanks for the guide! I've sorta been avoiding dipping my toes into deps.edn. Maybe I missed it, but this doesn't really seem to illustrate any advantage over lein now you have to hunt down extensions/plugins to do testing and make uberjars, cobble it all together yourself and then hope they remain maintained going forward what's the benefit? you can make wacky nonstandard directory layouts? I feel like I'm missing the motivation or maybe my problems are too simple. that said it does seem like a nice low level tool (ie. maybe lein could be implemented in terms of deps.edn)
- tomekw 7y ago
  You are right. Today I have discovered https://github.com/seancorfield/dot-clojure https://github.com/seancorfield/dot-clojure which tries to put everything in one place.
- casion 7y ago
  > cobble it all together yourself and then hope they remain maintained going forward That is one benefit of deps.end over lein... deps.edn is language supported, lein is third party.
- puredanger 7y ago
  Build tools like lein or Maven attempt to build a "declarative" definition of a project and then apply a set of plugins to that model using an implicit lifecycle. In reality, simple projects don't need that complexity and complicated projects only match 80% to either the lifecycle or the plugins available, so you end up wedging imperative things onto the build, hunting down obscure plugins, or hacking your own. Other build tools (like boot, or even Ant) acknowledge that builds are actually programs built from similar tasks. deps was designed to find a sweet spot in the middle of this with deps defined as data, aliases capturing program executions as data, but builds as programs. As such, the scope is drastically narrowed in deps to just a) building classpaths (by resolving dependency graphs) and b) launching programs. As such, this tends to be a dramatically simpler model to start with (your initial deps.edn can be empty), and a model that is easy to understand as you scale up. I think there is more to do in how we model "tools" (esp tools shared across projects) and program composites, but nothing prevents you from building these yourself if needed (as you have the full power of Clojure at your disposal). You can find a pretty comprehensive list of deps.edn tools at https://github.com/clojure/tools.deps.alpha/wiki/Tools https://github.com/clojure/tools.deps.alpha/wiki/Tools
frou_dh 7y ago
EDN is to Clojure as JSON is to JS. Shame it hasn't similarly transcended its home language because it has a killer feature: https://github.com/edn-format/edn#tagged-elements https://github.com/edn-format/edn#tagged-elements
- puredanger 7y ago
  FYI, there are edn implementations in many other languages: https://github.com/edn-format/edn/wiki/Implementations https://github.com/edn-format/edn/wiki/Implementations
  - cljuser 7y ago
    None of which work very well, and most are completely broken. The only ones that completely work are CLJ/CLJS/CLJR's internal implementations, so you have to pull in all of Clojure just to read EDN from java, for example. Transit is a much better choice here, but even that tends to be a bit non-idiomatic in languages like Python. That's not really the fault of Transit though, languages are just too different to have a single communication protocol work flawlessly between them all.
tvaughan 7y ago
Another working example: https://gitlab.com/tvaughan/kibit-runner https://gitlab.com/tvaughan/kibit-runner and https://clojars.org/tvaughan/kibit-runner https://clojars.org/tvaughan/kibit-runner (with publish to Clojars)

138 points by tomekw 7y ago

In addition to the post I will add here a nice video[1] that was recently uploaded from the very well known in Clojure community Sean Corfield which demonstrates the functionality and power of Deps.edn. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWjUccpFvrg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWjUccpFvrg

tomekw 7y ago
Thanks!
millettjon 7y ago
Sean also goes into his experience with boot vs tools.cli on the defn podcast https://soundcloud.com/defn-771544745/51-sean-corfield-aka-seancorfield https://soundcloud.com/defn-771544745/51-sean-corfield-aka-s...

danpeddle 7y ago

deps support in cursive is excellent, just as an aside. Feels very slick to get a project going. https://cursive-ide.com/userguide/deps.html https://cursive-ide.com/userguide/deps.html

tomekw 7y ago
True. This project was created with Cursive :)

dimovich 7y ago

What I really like about deps.edn is the ability to add git repos and also local projects as deps. Makes forking and testing libraries a charm. Another wonderful tutorial about using deps.edn that contains additional tips for Emacs -- https://cjohansen.no/tools-deps-figwheel-main-devcards-emacs/ https://cjohansen.no/tools-deps-figwheel-main-devcards-emacs...

elwell 7y ago
If using lein, there's this: https://github.com/reifyhealth/lein-git-down https://github.com/reifyhealth/lein-git-down

geokon 7y ago

thanks for the guide! I've sorta been avoiding dipping my toes into deps.edn. Maybe I missed it, but this doesn't really seem to illustrate any advantage over lein now you have to hunt down extensions/plugins to do testing and make uberjars, cobble it all together yourself and then hope they remain maintained going forward what's the benefit? you can make wacky nonstandard directory layouts? I feel like I'm missing the motivation or maybe my problems are too simple. that said it does seem like a nice low level tool (ie. maybe lein could be implemented in terms of deps.edn)

tomekw 7y ago
You are right. Today I have discovered https://github.com/seancorfield/dot-clojure https://github.com/seancorfield/dot-clojure which tries to put everything in one place.
casion 7y ago
> cobble it all together yourself and then hope they remain maintained going forward That is one benefit of deps.end over lein... deps.edn is language supported, lein is third party.
puredanger 7y ago
Build tools like lein or Maven attempt to build a "declarative" definition of a project and then apply a set of plugins to that model using an implicit lifecycle. In reality, simple projects don't need that complexity and complicated projects only match 80% to either the lifecycle or the plugins available, so you end up wedging imperative things onto the build, hunting down obscure plugins, or hacking your own. Other build tools (like boot, or even Ant) acknowledge that builds are actually programs built from similar tasks. deps was designed to find a sweet spot in the middle of this with deps defined as data, aliases capturing program executions as data, but builds as programs. As such, the scope is drastically narrowed in deps to just a) building classpaths (by resolving dependency graphs) and b) launching programs. As such, this tends to be a dramatically simpler model to start with (your initial deps.edn can be empty), and a model that is easy to understand as you scale up. I think there is more to do in how we model "tools" (esp tools shared across projects) and program composites, but nothing prevents you from building these yourself if needed (as you have the full power of Clojure at your disposal). You can find a pretty comprehensive list of deps.edn tools at https://github.com/clojure/tools.deps.alpha/wiki/Tools https://github.com/clojure/tools.deps.alpha/wiki/Tools

frou_dh 7y ago

EDN is to Clojure as JSON is to JS. Shame it hasn't similarly transcended its home language because it has a killer feature: https://github.com/edn-format/edn#tagged-elements https://github.com/edn-format/edn#tagged-elements

puredanger 7y ago
FYI, there are edn implementations in many other languages: https://github.com/edn-format/edn/wiki/Implementations https://github.com/edn-format/edn/wiki/Implementations
- cljuser 7y ago
  None of which work very well, and most are completely broken. The only ones that completely work are CLJ/CLJS/CLJR's internal implementations, so you have to pull in all of Clojure just to read EDN from java, for example. Transit is a much better choice here, but even that tends to be a bit non-idiomatic in languages like Python. That's not really the fault of Transit though, languages are just too different to have a single communication protocol work flawlessly between them all.

tvaughan 7y ago

Another working example: https://gitlab.com/tvaughan/kibit-runner https://gitlab.com/tvaughan/kibit-runner and https://clojars.org/tvaughan/kibit-runner https://clojars.org/tvaughan/kibit-runner (with publish to Clojars)