OSS updates of January 2023

In this post I'll give updates about open source I worked on during January 2023.

Projects

Babashka

Native, fast starting Clojure interpreter for scripting.

New releases in the past month: 1.0.170 - 1.1.173 Highlights:

Support for data_readers.clj(c)
Include http-client as built-in library
Compatibility with clojure.tools.namespace.repl/refresh
Compatibility with clojure.java.classpath (and other libraries which rely on java.class.path and RT/baseLoader)
Compatibility with eftest test runner (see demo)
Compatibility with cljfmt
Support for *loaded-libs* and (loaded-libs)
Support add-watch on vars (which adds compatibility with potemkin.namespaces)
BREAKING: make printing of script results explicit with --prn

Babashka compatibility in external libs

I contributed changes to the following libraries to make them compatible with babashka:

cljfmt - A tool for formatting Clojure code
carve - Remove unused Clojure vars
debux - A trace-based debugging library for Clojure and ClojureScript

Check the changelog for all the changes!

Http-client

The new babashka http-client project mostly replaces babashka.curl.

This month the default client was improved to accept gzip and deflate as encodings by default, reflecting what babashka.curl did.

Also babashka.http-client is now available as a built-in namespace in babashka v1.1.171 and higher.

Clj-kondo

Static analyzer and linter for Clojure code that sparks joy

Three new releases with many fixes and improvements in the last month. Check the changelog for details.

Some highlights:

#1742: new linter :aliased-namespace-var-usage: warn on var usage from namespaces that were used with :as-alias. See demo.
#1926: Add keyword analysis for EDN files. This means you can find references for keywords throughout your project with clojure-lsp, now including in EDN files.
#1902: provide :symbols analysis for navigation to symbols in quoted forms or EDN files. See demo.

The symbol analysis is used from clojure-lsp for which I provided a patch here.

A new project around clj-kondo is clj-kondo-bb which enables you to use clj-kondo from babashka scripts.

Also lein-clj-kondo got an update.

Instaparse-bb

This is a new project and gives you access to a subset of instaparse via a pod.

Instaparse was request a few times to have as a library in babashka and instaparse-bb is a good first step, without making a decision on that yet. See the relevant discussion here.

Carve

Remove unused Clojure vars

In the 0.3.5 version, Carve got the following updates:

Upgrade clj-kondo version
Make babashka compatible by using the clj-kondo-bb library
Discontinue the carve binary in favor of invocation with babashka. Instead you can now install carve with bbin:
```
  bbin install io.github.borkdude/carve
  
```
Implement babashka.cli integration
Implement --help

Jet

CLI to transform between JSON, EDN, YAML and Transit using Clojure

Version 0.4.23:

#123: Add base64/encode and base64/decode
Add jet/paths and jet/when-pred
Deprecate interactive mode
Deprecate --query in favor of --thread-last, --thread-first or --func

Fs

File system utility library for Clojure.

Fs has gotten a few new functions:

unifixy, to turn a Windows path into a path with Unix-style pathseparators. Note that that style is supported by the JVM and this offers a morereliable way to e.g. match filenames via regexes.
several xdg-*-home helper functions, contributed by @eval

See changelog for more details.

Neil

A CLI to add common aliases and features to deps.edn-based projects.

This month there were several small fixes, one of them being to always pick stable versions when adding or upgrading libraries. See full changelog for details.

Quickblog

Light-weight static blog engine for Clojure and babashka.

The blog you're currently reading is made with quickblog.

Version 0.2.3 was released with contributions from several people, mostly enabling you to tweak your own blog even more, while having good defaults.

Instances of quickblog can be seen here:

If you are also using quickblog, please let me know!

A collection of ready to be used SCI configs for e.g. Reagent, Promesa, Re-frame and other projects that are used in nbb, joyride, scittle, etc. See recent commits for what's been improved.

Edamame

Edamame got a new function: parse-next+string which returns the original string along with the parsed s-expression.

This tool can convert a project.edn file to a deps.edn file. It even supports Java compilation and evaluation of code within project.clj. There is now a lein plugin which enables you to sync your project.clj with your deps.edn every time you start lein. Several other minor enhancements were made. See changelog.

4ever-clojure

I added the ability to build and deploy 4ever-clojure to Github Actions. Every time a commit is merged, the site is automatically updated.

Brief mentions

The following projects also got updates, mostly in the form of maintenance and performance improvements. This post would get too long if I had to go into detail about them, so I'll briefly mention them in random order:

jna-native-image-sci: Compile a program that uses JNA to native-image and allow dynamic evaluation using SCI!
deps.clj: A faithful port of the clojure CLI bash script to Clojure
joyride: VSCode CLJS scripting and REPL (via SCI)
squint: CLJS syntax to JS compiler
tools-deps-native: Run tools.deps as a native binary
tools.bbuild: Library of functions for building Clojure projects
scittle: Execute Clojure(Script) directly from browser script tags via SCI
pod-babashka-buddy: A pod around buddy core (Cryptographic Api for Clojure).
nbb: Scripting in Clojure on Node.js using SCI
CLI: Turn Clojure functions into CLIs!
process: Clojure library for shelling out / spawning sub-processes
SCI: Configurable Clojure/Script interpreter suitable for scripting and Clojure DSLs
scittle: Execute Clojure(Script) directly from browser script tags via SCI
sci.configs: A collection of ready to be used SCI configs

Published: 2023-02-05

Tagged: clojure oss updates

REPL adventures