5 ms·

This also means that technically there is no reason why Heroku Cedar couldn't support other JVM languages, such as Scala. It would be fun to watch Scala and Clo

This also means that technically there is no reason why Heroku Cedar couldn't support other JVM languages, such as Scala. It would be fun to watch Scala and Clojure fight it out on an even playing field.

icey 15y ago
I'm not sure in what way you mean "fight it out", but I'm glad that Heroku opted to start with Clojure... As a guy trying to get on the JVM, the experience of getting up and running with Clojure has been significantly easier and less "fiddly" than trying to get a decent Scala environment set up.
- LiveTheDream 15y ago
  Can you explain further what was difficult about getting a Scala environment set up? For me it was "sudo port install scala", "sudu port install sbt", cd to/my/project/path, "sbt".
  - icey 15y ago
    Getting Scala & SBT installed hasn't been the tough part, it's getting it working with any IDE that has been complicated. A big part of the problem is that documentation seems to equally point to information for Scala 2.7 and 2.8, and less so for 2.9; but the directions are different for each version. Added to that are the differences between SBT 0.7.x and SBT 0.10.x. It makes it tricky to know what parts of the documentation are still valid and which parts have changed. Then you pick an IDE (Eclipse, IDEA, Emacs w/ Ensime) and figure out what plugins are valid today and what versions of Scala they work with and hope that it all matches up. With Clojure & emacs it's just a couple of commands to get Clojure installed and have a project correctly set up. I do like Scala, but there are still many rough edges that aren't helped by the frenetic pace of breaking changes in the ecosystem. I'm sure part of it is that I'm coming to Scala without any substantive Java background. (For whatever it's worth, emacs with Ensime had the best / most straightforward installation path out of any of the other IDEs)
    - joshhart 15y ago
      In my opinion, working with the IntelliJ has been very easy in Scala. There's an excellent plugin that you may want to check out if you haven't already that lets you generate IntelliJ project files from sbt. https://github.com/mpeltonen/sbt-idea https://github.com/mpeltonen/sbt-idea
rauljara 15y ago
What makes heroku work with rails is rails' use of gemfiles/bundler, so that you don't have to upload every gem that your rails app uses. I don't know how it works with node, but from heroku's getting started articles, it looks like leiningen (a clojure build tool) is what that allows them to offer clojure support. I don't know the scala ecosystem at all. Does scala have a similar tool that allows you to specify what java/scala libraries you want without actually having to upload said libraries?
- shadowfiend 15y ago
  maven is the main package-distribution mechanism in use in the Java world, and it is what is used in the Scala world, as well. The specific tool used varies (sometimes maven, sometimes simple-build-tool, sometimes buildr), but the de facto standard is there.
  - samstokes 15y ago
    There's sbt, which is less... mavenny, although I think it's actually just a wrapper around maven.
    - jbrechtel 15y ago
      As far as dependency management goes SBT can consume Maven dependencies, Apache Ivy dependencies or just manually added JARs to a 'lib' directory.
  - Zak 15y ago
    Leiningen is (mostly) a Clojure wrapper around Maven and Ant.
    - mechanical_fish 15y ago
      Which explains its name: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leiningen_Versus_the_Ants http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leiningen_Versus_the_Ants
- 15y ago
samstokes 15y ago
Agreed - assuming they do plan to "officially" support other JVM languages in the future, that would be a pretty big deal: * If JRuby got all the nice operational support that Heroku currently gives CRuby, it would be an awesome way to add power to an existing Ruby codebase (run the same code in JRuby, give or take a few gems, start taking advantage of Java libraries or using threads for better throughput). * Heroku supporting Scala and Clojure could really boost their popularity - AFAIK there's no service for those languages that makes deploying a production-ready, public-facing web app as easy as Heroku does for Ruby. Update - I guess this quote from the article is relevant, and could indicate a reluctance to support other JVM languages: Though growing quickly, the Clojure community is small enough to be approachable and accepting of new ideas. This is crucial for a platform like Heroku, which offers a deployment workflow that is a radical departure from that used for server-based deployments. Language communities with heavy investment in traditional deployment methods will be harder to adapt to the Heroku way.
- cmelbye 15y ago
  DotCloud has full Java support, it's just a matter of building a war file and deploying it.
- murz 15y ago
  Scala and Clojure can both be deployed to Google AppEngine.
  - andymoe 15y ago
    See https://github.com/gcv/appengine-magic https://github.com/gcv/appengine-magic to help get Clojure working on App Engine. It's quite nice and the docs are pretty complete.
- swashbuck1r 15y ago
  We support running Scala apps at CloudBees today without locking down the JVM, so you can take advantage of the full set of language features (like actors). By combining the Java PaaS with our GIT and Jenkins services, we can enable pushing those "harder" Java/Scala apps to the cloud using a Heroku-like GIT workflow.
lapusta 15y ago
https://github.com/lstoll/heroku-playframework https://github.com/lstoll/heroku-playframework - looks like they are already there.

icey 15y ago

I'm not sure in what way you mean "fight it out", but I'm glad that Heroku opted to start with Clojure... As a guy trying to get on the JVM, the experience of getting up and running with Clojure has been significantly easier and less "fiddly" than trying to get a decent Scala environment set up.

LiveTheDream 15y ago
Can you explain further what was difficult about getting a Scala environment set up? For me it was "sudo port install scala", "sudu port install sbt", cd to/my/project/path, "sbt".
- icey 15y ago
  Getting Scala & SBT installed hasn't been the tough part, it's getting it working with any IDE that has been complicated. A big part of the problem is that documentation seems to equally point to information for Scala 2.7 and 2.8, and less so for 2.9; but the directions are different for each version. Added to that are the differences between SBT 0.7.x and SBT 0.10.x. It makes it tricky to know what parts of the documentation are still valid and which parts have changed. Then you pick an IDE (Eclipse, IDEA, Emacs w/ Ensime) and figure out what plugins are valid today and what versions of Scala they work with and hope that it all matches up. With Clojure & emacs it's just a couple of commands to get Clojure installed and have a project correctly set up. I do like Scala, but there are still many rough edges that aren't helped by the frenetic pace of breaking changes in the ecosystem. I'm sure part of it is that I'm coming to Scala without any substantive Java background. (For whatever it's worth, emacs with Ensime had the best / most straightforward installation path out of any of the other IDEs)
  - joshhart 15y ago
    In my opinion, working with the IntelliJ has been very easy in Scala. There's an excellent plugin that you may want to check out if you haven't already that lets you generate IntelliJ project files from sbt. https://github.com/mpeltonen/sbt-idea https://github.com/mpeltonen/sbt-idea

rauljara 15y ago

What makes heroku work with rails is rails' use of gemfiles/bundler, so that you don't have to upload every gem that your rails app uses. I don't know how it works with node, but from heroku's getting started articles, it looks like leiningen (a clojure build tool) is what that allows them to offer clojure support. I don't know the scala ecosystem at all. Does scala have a similar tool that allows you to specify what java/scala libraries you want without actually having to upload said libraries?

shadowfiend 15y ago
maven is the main package-distribution mechanism in use in the Java world, and it is what is used in the Scala world, as well. The specific tool used varies (sometimes maven, sometimes simple-build-tool, sometimes buildr), but the de facto standard is there.
- samstokes 15y ago
  There's sbt, which is less... mavenny, although I think it's actually just a wrapper around maven.
  - jbrechtel 15y ago
    As far as dependency management goes SBT can consume Maven dependencies, Apache Ivy dependencies or just manually added JARs to a 'lib' directory.
- Zak 15y ago
  Leiningen is (mostly) a Clojure wrapper around Maven and Ant.
  - mechanical_fish 15y ago
    Which explains its name: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leiningen_Versus_the_Ants http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leiningen_Versus_the_Ants
15y ago

samstokes 15y ago

Agreed - assuming they do plan to "officially" support other JVM languages in the future, that would be a pretty big deal: * If JRuby got all the nice operational support that Heroku currently gives CRuby, it would be an awesome way to add power to an existing Ruby codebase (run the same code in JRuby, give or take a few gems, start taking advantage of Java libraries or using threads for better throughput). * Heroku supporting Scala and Clojure could really boost their popularity - AFAIK there's no service for those languages that makes deploying a production-ready, public-facing web app as easy as Heroku does for Ruby. Update - I guess this quote from the article is relevant, and could indicate a reluctance to support other JVM languages: Though growing quickly, the Clojure community is small enough to be approachable and accepting of new ideas. This is crucial for a platform like Heroku, which offers a deployment workflow that is a radical departure from that used for server-based deployments. Language communities with heavy investment in traditional deployment methods will be harder to adapt to the Heroku way.

cmelbye 15y ago
DotCloud has full Java support, it's just a matter of building a war file and deploying it.
murz 15y ago
Scala and Clojure can both be deployed to Google AppEngine.
- andymoe 15y ago
  See https://github.com/gcv/appengine-magic https://github.com/gcv/appengine-magic to help get Clojure working on App Engine. It's quite nice and the docs are pretty complete.
swashbuck1r 15y ago
We support running Scala apps at CloudBees today without locking down the JVM, so you can take advantage of the full set of language features (like actors). By combining the Java PaaS with our GIT and Jenkins services, we can enable pushing those "harder" Java/Scala apps to the cloud using a Heroku-like GIT workflow.

lapusta 15y ago

https://github.com/lstoll/heroku-playframework https://github.com/lstoll/heroku-playframework - looks like they are already there.