Unable to build standalone jar using boot - clojure

Question

EDIT: Added more information at the end. Also, got war to run with jetty-runner.jar (not with tomcat however)
I am using boot as the build tool for my clojure application.
This is the first application I have written with cljs, cljc and clj code (along with sass) all in one project.
My build.boot has the following task-options
(def db-opts (:db (clojure.edn/read-string (slurp "resources/config.edn"))))
(task-options!
pom {:project 'gcr
:version "0.1"}
cljs {:optimizations :simple}
uber {:as-jars true}
war {:file "gcr.war"}
ragtime {:database (str "jdbc:"
(:dbtype db-opts) "://"
(:user db-opts) ":"
(:password db-opts) "#"
(:host db-opts) ":"
(:port db-opts) "/"
(:dbname db-opts))}
test {:include #"gcr.test"
:junit-output-to "junit-out"})
my build task is defined as follows:
(deftask build
"Builds an uberjar of this project that can be run with java -jar"
[]
(comp
(aot :all true ;; :namespace #{'gcr.server}
)
(pom)
(cljs :optimizations :simple)
(sass)
(uber)
(jar :file "gcr.jar" :main 'gcr.server)
(sift :include #{#"gcr.jar"})
(target)))
When i run boot build the project builds fine without any errors.
But when I run java -jar target/gcr.jar
I get the following:
$ java -jar target/gcr.jar
Picked up _JAVA_OPTIONS: -Dawt.useSystemAAFontSettings=lcd -Dswing.aatext=true
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: clojure/lang/Var
at gcr.server.<clinit>(Unknown Source)
Caused by: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: clojure.lang.Var
at java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(URLClassLoader.java:382)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:424)
at sun.misc.Launcher$AppClassLoader.loadClass(Launcher.java:349)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:357)
... 1 more
I have been looking at this for about 24 hours now and still unable to figure out how to get this working. (I finally was able to build a war that works with jetty-runner but not on tomcat)
----------
Some more info:
My boot.properties is
BOOT_CLOJURE_NAME=org.clojure/clojure
BOOT_CLOJURE_VERSION=1.10.0
BOOT_VERSION=2.8.2
and I am using openjdk version "1.8.0_202"
I checked if the jar file built has the clojure jar using jar tf target/gcr.jar and the following line is listed:
7c506484bc48541ffa5dcb4d9366a8a2-clojure-1.10.0.jar
My IFDE works fine, I have the following dev task defined as follows:
(deftask dev
"Launch Immediate Feedback Development Environment"
[]
(comp
(serve :handler 'gcr.core/app ;; ring handler
:resource-root "public" ;; root classpath
:reload true) ;; reload ns
(watch)
(reload)
(cljs-repl) ;; before cljs task
(cljs)
(sass)
(target :dir #{"public"})))
set-env! part is as follows:
(set-env!
:source-paths #{"src/scss" "src/clj" "src/cljs" "src/cljc"}
:resource-paths #{"html" "resources"}
:dependencies '[[org.clojure/clojure "1.10.0"]
[org.clojure/clojurescript "1.10.520"]
;; server
[compojure "1.6.1"]
[ring/ring-core "1.7.1"]
[ring/ring-jetty-adapter "1.7.1"]
[ring/ring-json "0.4.0"]
[ring-middleware-format "0.7.4"]
;; [javax.servlet/servlet-api "2.5" :scope "test"]
;; [yogthos/config "1.1.1"]
;; java 10 upgrade
[javax.xml.bind/jaxb-api "2.4.0-b180830.0359"]
;; common
[org.clojure/core.async "0.4.490"]
[org.clojars.akiel/async-error "0.3"]
[hickory "0.7.1"]
[instaparse "1.4.10"]
;; clj
[clj-time "0.15.1"]
[clj-http "3.9.1"]
[clout "2.2.1"]
[org.clojure/data.json "0.2.6"]
[org.clojure/data.codec "0.1.1"] ;; Base64
;; cljs
[com.andrewmcveigh/cljs-time "0.5.2"]
[prismatic/dommy "1.1.0"]
[hipo "0.5.2"]
[hodgepodge "0.1.3"]
[cljs-http "0.1.46"]
[com.cemerick/url "0.1.1"]
[reagent "0.8.1"]
;; db
[ragtime "0.8.0"] ;; Migrations
[hikari-cp "2.7.1"] ;; Connection Pooling
[org.clojure/java.jdbc "0.7.9"]
[honeysql "0.9.4"]
[org.postgresql/postgresql "42.2.5"]
;; Authentication framework with JWT
[buddy/buddy-auth "2.1.0"]
[buddy/buddy-core "1.5.0"]
[buddy/buddy-sign "3.0.0"]
;; argon2 for password hashing
[de.mkammerer/argon2-jvm "2.5"]
;; logging
[com.taoensso/timbre "4.10.0"] ;; logging
[com.fzakaria/slf4j-timbre "0.3.12"]
[org.slf4j/log4j-over-slf4j "1.7.26"]
[org.slf4j/jul-to-slf4j "1.7.26"]
[org.slf4j/jcl-over-slf4j "1.7.26"]
;; spec , test & gen
[org.clojure/test.check "0.9.0"]
;; Dependencies for build process
[adzerk/boot-cljs "2.1.5"]
[adzerk/boot-test "1.2.0" :scope "test"]
[pandeiro/boot-http "0.8.3"]
[adzerk/boot-reload "0.6.0"]
[adzerk/boot-cljs-repl "0.4.0"]
[cider/piggieback "0.3.9" :scope "test"]
[nrepl "0.4.5" :scope "test"]
;; [com.cemerick/piggieback "0.2.2" :scope "test"]
[weasel "0.7.0" :scope "test"]
[org.clojure/tools.nrepl "0.2.13" :scope "test"]
[mbuczko/boot-ragtime "0.3.1"]
[deraen/boot-sass "0.3.1"]
[tolitius/boot-check "0.1.12"]])
After a lot of playing around with tasks, I was able to build a war file that works with jetty-runner with the following task:
(deftask build-war
"Build the target/app.war file"
[]
(comp
(aot :all true)
(web :serve 'gcr.core/app)
(cljs :optimizations :advanced)
(sass)
(sift :move {#"(.*)js$" "public/$1js"
#"(.*)html$" "public/$1html"
#"css/(.*)" "public/css/$1"})
(uber)
(war :file "gcr.war")
(sift :include [#"gcr.war"])
(target)))
Using the sift task to move the static resources to the public folder was key, since I had my compojure resources defined as follows in my routes.clj (not including API and other routes).
(defroutes gen-routes
(GET "/login" [] auth/auth-handler)
(files "/" {:root "public"}) ;; to serve static resources
(resources "/" {:root "public"}) ;; to serve anything else
(not-found "404 Page Not Found")) ;; page not found
This however still does not produce a war file that works on tomcat. That is, on deploying to tomcat, all the API routes works as expected, but the static html files come up as HTTP/404.