Installing libraries with leiningen without creating project - clojure

I am learning Clojure and coming from a Ruby background.
I am looking for something analogous to gem install <library>. The various incantations of lein install do not seem to fit this bill.
Is there a way to simply install a library locally so that it can be referenced in the REPL without the need to create a project?

Seems like, you want to install a library with lein. Here is the plugin, install it and use like
lein localrepo install <filename> <[groupId/]artifactId> <version>

If your aim is merely to load libraries in the REPL consider using alembic. It loads dynamically classpaths, resolve dependencies and automatically pulls libraries from the repositories.
Here is a use case:
(require 'alembic.still)
(alembic.still/distill '[enlive "1.1.1"])
It simply requires you to add the following entry to your .lein/project.clj:
{:dev {:dependencies [[alembic "0.1.1"]]}}
See this answer.

Java and thus clojure do not generally have the the idea of globally installed libraries. You should always be creating a classpath with the minimal set of dependencies. You need somehow to specify and manage this classpath and the easiest way to do this is with leiningen, which requires a project.
leiningen automates the process of retrieving the remote libraries and placing them in your local repository which is somewhat analogous to gem install, but these libraries do not become automatically available to a REPL.
The easiest way to have a set of libraries always available is to have a 'scratch' project which you use for REPL experiments before starting a new project. It's not too much of an overhead.

In lein 2 you can update profiles.clj with package you want to install:
~\user\.lein\profiles.clj
With the first run of any project with lein, the local repo will be updated with what was incereased in profiles.clj.
Sometimes I just run lein deps without being in a project folder, this will update the local repo for you.
This way you can add any library to your project.clj or call it from repl and it will be extracted from local repo.

If you don’t have a project, you add your dependencies in your global lein user profile instead located at ~/.lein/profiles.clj.
The doc isn’t great for lein to be honest. So this part is confusing. But you edit that file as such:
{:user {:plugins [[lein-pprint "1.1.1"]]
:dependencies [[slamhound "1.3.1"]]}}
In the :plugins vector you add whatever global lein plugin you want to have. And in the :dependencies vector you add whatever library you want available globally.
Then anywhere you start a lein repl you’d have those dependencies available to you. And everywhere you run lein you’ll have the additional plugin features available to you.
If you use tools.deps instead of lein, aka, the clj command instead of the lein command. Then it is a bit different. You instead want to modify your ~/.clojure/deps.edn file. Where you’d add dependencies there instead:
{:deps {clj-time {:mvn/version "0.14.2"}}}
So if you put the above in your user deps.edn whenever you run clj command the clj-time library will be available to you.

Related

Interactive workflow with external libraries in Clojure [duplicate]

I have multiple, separate leiningen projects that ostensibly could depend on one-another.
Example:
~/projects/mywebapp (my own project)
~/projects/noir (a clone of the github repo)
~/projects/clojureql (a clone of the github repo)
I want to have them all compiled into the same JVM at the same time. I would like to run the git repos bleeding edge (pulling new commits/making my own commits) and not have to run lein jar or lein deps and certainly not have to restart the VM if I change any of the projects.
Here's a use case:
After running lein swank, from within emacs, I connect to the repl and compile a file from mywebapp (with C-c-k), which requires a file from noir. It finds the version of the file in my projects directory. Later, I open that file, edit it, and compile it (with C-c-k).
Note that I'm not asking for auto-compiling when I do git pull. I just don't want to have to restart the JVM or do lengthy jar compiling processes.
Is this possible in leiningen? How can I set this up?
Does this question from the Lein FAQ help?
Q: I want to hack two projects in parallel, but it's annoying to switch between them.
A: Use a feature called checkout dependencies. If you create a directory called checkouts in your project root and symlink some other
project roots into it, Leiningen will allow you to hack on them in
parallel. That means changes in the dependency will be visible in the
main project without having to go through the whole
install/switch-projects/deps/restart-repl cycle. Note that this is not
a replacement for listing the project in :dependencies; it simply
supplements that for tighter change cycles.
If you're already using swank, you don't need lein checkout dependencies. You can just C-c C-k your project (which will load the jarred versions of noir/whatever), and then browse to your local version of noir and C-c C-k that as well. Swank happily sends all the code to your repl, and the jvm never need know that it came from a different place!
I can only recommend this for smallish changes though, because I think if you compile noir.core, which depends on (say) noir.internal, clojure will load the jarred version of noir.internal even while you compile the local version of noir.core. Even so, it's a handy trick in general.

How to add libraries in clojure?

Everywhere I see, it is suggested that I add :dependencies in project.clj and run lein deps. Where are these downloaded? What is my CLASSPATH and how can I add my own JARs to my clojure project?
While the answer for
Dependencies in maven local repositories with leiningen
kind of solves my need, I am not marking it duplicate as what I am asking is much simpler (being a beginner, who does not have much experience with Java to know about Maven). I am still finding it hard to understand where clojure ends and leiningen begins.
The thing I was looking for is a way to add library like we do in most other languages (e.g. copy JAR to project directory and import in code).
This is great question since it's not clear at all. Leiningen is often a black hole and if something isn't working it's often hard to debug.
I just recently had to do some manual scripting and leiningen does help you with finding out these things.
Where are these downloaded?
The directory is in $HOME/.m2. This is Maven's: http://maven.apache.org/settings.html
What is my classpath?
The classpath is set depending on your :dependencies as well as your :source-paths and :resource-paths vectors.
You can find out your classpath like this:
lein classpath
This will print a huge list depending on your configuration.
You could --for instance-- then run a script:
java -cp cljs-1.7.xx.jar:scripts:$(lein with-profile +dev-cljs classpath) clojure.main scripts/cljs-build.clj dev
That has access to all your projects dependencies and loads them properly.
Although you could use lein run to achieve something similar:
lein with-profile +dev-cljs run -m clojure.main scripts/cljs-build.clj dev
How do I add my own JARs?
See: leiningen - how to add dependencies for local jars?
Run lein install from your library's project dir.
Add an entry to :dependencies in client's project.clj.
Make sure the lib name/version and its reference match (eg. [mylib "0.0.1-SNAPSHOT"]).
Hope this helps, forget about jar loc and cp for now.

Local dependencies in Leiningen without creating a Maven repo?

I'm building a Compojure web application, and I'd like it to use functions from another Clojure project I wrote. I'm not at all familiar with Maven, and from what I've heard, it has a very steep learning curve. Unfortunately, everything I've seen suggests using a private Maven repo as a dependency and doesn't suggest an alternative. I'd really like to avoid struggling with Maven if possible. Does anyone know of an alternative? I'm currently using the latest version of Leiningen.
If the other project is also a lein project, you just need to do a "lein install" and that will take care of creating all the local maven repo stuff. Then you can just depend on that project as you would do with any other lib. For example:
(defproject mylib "1.0"
....)
lein install
(defproject myotherproject "a.b.c"
:dependencies [[mylib "1.0"]]
.....)
If you are sharing "myotherproject" with other people and you want to remove some of the inconvenience of doing a "lein install" every time you change the mylib project, have a look at the lein checkouts feature and then use the equivalent of svn externals of your VCS of choice.
'lein checkout' appears to be another way to achieve the same goal. a lot more details here and here. In general, the idea is to create a symlink to the local copy of the dependency, but the process does require one lein install. I also found this lein plugin that might be even better, but I've yet to try it myself.

Getting Leiningen to download dependencies outside of a project

I'm learning Clojure, but I'm not really building whole projects for each little code snippet, I just drop them into a REPL. Occasionally code snippets I'm exploring require a dependency (usually something that is/was in clojure.contrib).
The only way I know how to get those dependencies onto my computer is to have an empty leiningen project, add the dependency to project.clj and run lein deps.
Is there any way I can download libraries globally, outside of a project? If it's that I really really don't want to, why?
I have a small project that I use for testing code snippets and answering SO questions, and am also constantly adding dependencies. The project.clj for this project includes Pomegranate as a dependency which then makes dynamically loading other dependencies as easy as:
(use '[cemerick.pomegranate :only (add-dependencies)])
(add-dependencies :coordinates '[[my-dependency "1.2.3"]])
Give lein-try a go. It's a leiningen plugin I wrote that lets you say something like lein try [my-dependency 1.0.0] or even lein try my-dependency at the command line and drop into a REPL with the dependency available.
If you are using lein-exec as your way of running one-off scripts, you can now use a little snippet at the top of the script. Add:
(use '[leiningen.exec :only (deps)])
(deps '[[clj-time "0.8.0"]])
to the top of your clj. Now running lein exec [example.clj] will automatically pull down the requirement.
If you are new to lein exec, just add {:user {:plugins [[lein-exec "0.3.4"]]}} to your ~/.lein/profiles.clj and you can begin running lein exec on your clj files. It is a great and quick way to run code without a project.

Clojure, Lein, JavaFx, native deps

Context
I want to use JavaFx with clojure.
I am aware of http://nailthatbug.net/2011/06/clojure-javafx-2-0-simple-app/
Question:
Is there a way to make JavaFX work with Clojure using native-deps in lein instead?
Thanks!
I've created a simple Clojure and JavaFX example on Github. Testing on Ubuntu I had to install the JavaFX runtime into my local Maven repository, using the deploy:deploy-file target (install:install-file did not work for me).
mvn deploy:deploy-file -DgroupId=local.oracle -DartifactId=javafxrt -Dversion=2.2.0 -Dpackaging=jar -Dfile=/usr/lib/jvm/java-7-oracle-amd64/jre/lib/jfxrt.jar -Durl=file:/home/raju/.m2/repository
Make sure you have the following arguments set correctly:
-Dfile={full path to jfxrt.jar in jre/lib folder}
-Durl=file:{full path to Maven repository, e.g. $HOME/m2.repository}
In the project.clj, I added the dependency based on the -DgroupId and -DartifactId values when installing the JAR into the repository. If you use change these values, make sure to change the dependency accordingly:
[local.oracle/javafxrt "2.2.0"]
Java was able to load the binary libraries without any problems. If Java reports problems loading a binary library, e.g.
Caused by: java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: Can't load library:
/usr/lib/jvm/javafx-sdk/rt/lib/amd64/libglass.so
check out these two question on SO:
What is LD_LIBRARY_PATH and how to use it?
java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError no *****.dll in java.library.path
Because JavaFx has native dependencies your option are limited to, ]
shipping these dependencies with your project (including them),
creating a package that you can depend on which has them (providing them),
or having your package require the user to install them in some other way.
Because the tutorial you link to covers the case where the user of your package/program installs JavaFx on their own, by using robert.hook and depending on the end-user's package manager to provide the actual native dependencies. I'll cover how to have your package/program include the dependencies.
native-deps can be used to ship native dependencies with your package. You just need to add all the .so, .dll, .etc files in the appropriate directories. I think the projects github page does a better job than I of explaining the structure.
The link in the question is broken so I can't see your example, but with Java 8, JavaFX is now part of the standard JDK/JRE. I therefore expect the native dependency issue to be irrelevant at this point.
Not sure if this will work for others, but this appears (so far) to have worked for me:
mvn install:install-file -DgroupId=javafx -DartifactId=javafx -Dversion=2.1.0 -Dpackaging=jar -Dfile=/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.7.0.jdk/Contents/Home/jre/lib/jfxrt.jar
I have no idea why this works, but I believe jfxrt.jar has the files I need. Then, after this, I kindle it in project.clj as
[javafx "2.1.0"]
in the :dependencies (not :native-deps) section.
[Having written this, I really have no idea why this even appears to work.]