Code run in REPL but not if saved to a file - clojure

I'm trying to create a text based Clojure game (inspired by Land of Lisp).
(def *nodes* {:living-room "you are in the living-room. a wizard is snoring loudly on the couch."
:garden "you are in a beautiful garden. there is a well in front of you."
:attic "you are in the attic. there is a giant welding torch in the corner."})
(defn describe-location [location nodes]
(nodes location))
The code is running in the REPL but if I saved the code to a file and trying to run:
(describe-location :attic *nodes*)
I got:
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Wrong
number of args (1) passed to: user$describe-location (wizard-game.clj:
0)
What I'm doing wrong?
Here is the file: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3630641/wizard-game.clj

You have too many parentheses. Instead of (describe-location(:garden *nodes*)), you want (describe-location :garden *nodes*).
Remember that the name of the function goes after the open paren, not before: you were calling (:garden *nodes*) and then calling describe-location on the result, which failed because describe-location wants two arguments, not one.

one potential problem is that the version of the function that is loaded into the repl in the 'user' name space may not be the one you expect, so you may want to (load "wizard-game.clj") into a fresh REPL. though many people are using leiningen for this these days, except for the good number of people using maven directly.
first give your're game a namespace
(ns com.me.myGame
....)
then you can load it into the repl by running
(use 'com.me.myGame)
and call the functions by either their name-space-qualified names
(com.me.myGame/describe-location :attic)
or from the repl switch into that namespace:
(in-ns 'com.me.myGame)
(describe-location :attic)
or you can use leiningen to create your project and name-space automatically.
leiningen is worth it in this case because it just took me longer to write this sentence than to make a project with lein. There are a lot of good tutorials for leiningen.
lein new wizard-game
and then edit src/wizard-game/core.clj. this will let you add dependencies later with out fuss if when the project grows to world-famous-success

Related

lein uberjar taking forever

I want to create an uberjar of a leiningen app. My config is:
:uberjar {:omit-source true
:aot :all
:uberjar-name "myapp.jar"
:source-paths ["env/prod/clj" ]
:resource-paths ["env/prod/resources"]}
But upon doing lein uberjar, I find the the files in the project are being compiled, but the compilation is stuck on the file that contains most of the code, for ten minutes and counting. This file doesn't contain more than 140 lines.
TL;DR: never def side-effects
As stated in the comments:
... I just figured that this line: (defonce server (http/start-server server-handler {:port 8982})) is causing the hang.
Don't put stuff like that at top-level.
defonce only means it will not be re-def-ed once it's there (so in this case
it would prevent some "port already in use" error on reloading.
Ways out of that dilemma
Write a function, that starts this server. Then call that from your main. For
development you can run that function from the REPL or you can sprinkle some
reload/restart logic in your user-ns.
Another option could be using delay: it will only execute the code once it gets derefed.
The more "binding of resources" you have to deal with, the more some systematic
approach will give your application a better structure. E.g. take a look at:
weavejester/integrant
stuartsierra/component
tolitius/mount
So why is putting blocking things or side-effects in a def problematic?
The way the Clojure compiler works, is by actually "running" the code. So compile basically is:
enable generation byte code and write it out as .class files
load the namespace and "run" it
This means, that at compile time, the top level side-effects are executed.
Therefor blocking operations in a def, will block compilation (which is quite
obvious), or your CI server will fail to compile, because it can not connect to
the database etc.
A great explanation of how the code generation in Clojure works:
What Are All These Class Files Even About? And Other Stories - Gary Fredericks

clojure.tools/namespace refresh fails with "No namespace: foo"

I'm using tools.namespace to provide smart reloading of namespaces on the REPL. However, when calling refresh or refresh-all, it throws an error.
user=> (require '[clojure.tools.namespace.repl :as tn])
user=> (tn/refresh)
:reloading (ep31.common ep31.routes ep31.config ep31.application user ep31.common-test ep31.example-test)
:error-while-loading user
java.lang.Exception: No namespace: ep31.config, compiling:(user.clj:1:1)
And it seems to end up in this weird state where (require ep31.config) works without an error, but afterwards the namespace isn't actually defined.
I kind of figured this out, this seems to be a combination of circumstances
there were AOT compiled classes left in target/classes from doing lein uberjar previously
tools.namespace doesn't function correctly when loaded namespaces are AOT compiled
target/classes is by default on the classpath
So long story short, if you did a jar/uberjar build before, then remove target/ and things should start working again.
The question I haven't been able to solve yet is why target/classes is on the classpath to begin with. I'm suspecting it's being added by Leiningen, but haven't found yet where or why it's happening.
I learned this the hard way, documentation for :target-path says (https://github.com/technomancy/leiningen/blob/master/sample.project.clj#L309-L313):
;; All generated files will be placed in :target-path. In order to avoid
;; cross-profile contamination (for instance, uberjar classes interfering
;; with development), it's recommended to include %s in in your custom
;; :target-path, which will splice in names of the currently active profiles.
:target-path "target/%s/"
I guess there has to be legacy reasons that :target-path "target/%s/" isn't the default.

Reloadable Clojure REPL

How to create a REPL for Clojure for which the code is reloadable?
I can create a new project, and get a REPL up and running:
lein new app stack
cd stack
lein repl
(-main)
Doing the above should get you "Hello, World!".
I would like to stay in the REPL, change the code to println "Howdy partner!", and then just (-main) again. Either auto-reloading or (perhaps even better) simple manual reloading (for instance with a command like (r)) would make the environment complete.
It seems with lein I'm already getting into the right namespace (any namespace but the user namespace from which you then have to (in-ns 'some-ns) is the right namespace!). The only unanswered part is code reloading - either manual or auto.
As it happens I previously asked how to do this with boot.
For manual reloading you can use the same trick as posted in the boot answer, which is to have a function that does the reloading for you:
(defn r [] (require 'stack.core :reload))
Once the above function is part of the stack.core namespace, you can call it from the REPL. Pretty simple - the namespace stack.core has a function in it which reloads itself.
Make code changes from the editor, reload with (r), then run again...
There's also the lein-autoreload plugin for automatic reloading.

Leiningen, repl, uberjar: Unable to resolve symbol, No such var

While my lein new app project runs merrily inside the Light Table, lein uberjar won't work. Curiously, it behaves exactly like a classic Pascal compiler: it can't resolve references ahead of definitions. Another curiosity: yesterday it worked. I am not aware of fooling with anything sensitive.
Google says that the subj symptoms are quite commonplace; I tried whatever helped other people in the same (?) plight, but to no avail. By the way, usually they blame it on software bugs: "get the latest version of Leiningen and Clojure". I've got 2.5.0 and 1.6.
The project (main file) is here: https://github.com/Tyrn/pcc/blob/master/src/pcc/core.clj
As it is, parsed-args can't be resolved inside build-album; if I move the -main function to the top of the file, 'No such var' happens to cli-options inside -main. No amount of fiddling with explicit use of namespaces makes any difference.
Again, inside the Light Table everything runs fine.
Using def inside of a function is not idiomatic, especially if there is no reason to have it as a global variable. Just pass it as a function parameter:
(let [parsed-args (parse-opts ...)]
...
(build-album parsed-args))
If you really need global state, you can use e.g. a promise (alternatively, an atom):
(defonce parsed-args (promise))
...
(deliver parsed-args (parse-opts ...))
However, Clojure files are read from top to bottom, and yes, functions not having access to bindings introduced later in the file is by design. You can use declare to tell the parser what to expect:
(declare ^:dynamic *parsed-args*)
(defn build-album ...)
(def ^:dynamic *parsed-args* ...)
...
(binding [*parsed-args* (parse-opts ...)]
(build-album))
TL;DR: If not necessary, avoid global state; if necessary, minimize it.

Enclojure REPL can't find dependent clj file on Load

I have a problem with the Enclojure REPL and using clojure modules from it. The Load/Change REPL to file/ns works fine with an isolated clojure file, but breaks with a file which has references to another clojure file which I try to use from my project.
Here are the exact steps:
Create a new project.
Create a clojure module foobar.clj (namespace com.acme.foobar)
Define a function which returns a value in foobar.clj:
(ns com.acme.foobar
(:use com.acme.othermodule))
(defn myfunc1 []
"a")
Open a Netbeans IDE REPL
From foobar.clj's context menu select:
Change REPL to file/ns
Load
From REPL call the (myfunc1) function. This works just fine:
com.acme.foobar=> (myfunc1)
"a"
The problems start when when I try to refer to other files from foobar. Here's what I do:
Create a new clojure module othermodule.clj
(ns com.acme.othermodule)
(defn fromothermodule []
"b")
Now try to call this from foobar.clj:
(defn myfunc2 []
(fromothermodule))
From othermodule.clj's context menu I select:
Change REPL to file/ns
Load
To make the REPL realize that there is new module it should be able to run.
I do same things things to foobar.clj which now refers to othermodule.clj, but I get:
CompilerException java.io.FileNotFoundException: Could not locate com/acme/othermodule__init.class or com/acme/othermodule.clj on classpath: (NO_SOURCE_FILE:50)
com.acme.foobar=>
This error message comes from both "Change REPL to file/ns" and "Load"
What am I missing? Should I do some other tricks to make this happen? Even the desperate measure of Run->Clean and Build the main project doesn't help (that would of course make the REPL business pretty painful anyway).
I am using NetBeans 6.7.1 and enclojure-plugin-2009-11-3.nbm.
Got the right solution from Eric Thorsen in the google group:
There are three ways to create the REPL from window-menu. Don't use any of those, instead right
click on the Project and "Start Project REPL". Now the paths are set up accordingly.
My first recommendation is to move from NetBeans/Enclojure to IDEA/La Clojure. JetBrains recently created an open source version of their IDE, and the Clojure plugin works fine in it. Since discovering this, I ditched NetBeans and Enclojure. I find La Clojure a pleasure to work in, but of course your mileage may vary.
Back from when I did this in NetBeans, I seem to remember Enclojure source code resides in a subdirectory called "lib". I think I solved a similar problem by fiddling with directory prefixes on the name of the file to load. Probably something like "../lib/YourName". I managed this by trial and error, so I can't relate the exact rules and syntax.
Two things that might help:
You can run something like (println (System/getProperty "java.user.dir")) to find out where Clojure thinks it's executing from.
You could start, as I did, with using an absolute path until you find your way to the correct directory name. Something like "/home/carl/NetbeansProjects/MyProject/lib/myfile.clj" .