Working combination of .emacs, Aquamacs, swank-clojure, clojure-mode?
Raffael Cavallaro
I've read Bill Clementson's Blog on setting up clojure, and I'm not
exactly a neophyte - I've been using slime with sbcl, openmcl, and
other lisps for years.
Nevertheless, even starting with an absolutely blank .emacs and
freshly downloaded copies of Aquamacs, clojure, swank-clojure, and
clojure-mode, the instructions in Bill's blog do not yield a working
clojure under slime.
I've managed to get M-x run-lisp to work with the more basic of the
two clojure modes out there, so Bill's shell script in and of itself
is not the problem at all (it also works fine from a terminal window).
However, I've never gotten slime to work, so somehow it doesn't play
nice with swank-clojure and/or clojure-mode and/or slime.
Is there anyone who would be willing to post an *actual* .emacs (not
"add this line...," .emacs files involve clobbering globals, so order
really does matter), and links to the *actual* versions of clojure,
slime, swank-clojure, and clojure-mode that together, produce a
functioning clojure under slime/Aquamacs?
As a side note, I might suggest that links to a combination of ever-
changing git repositories might not be the very best idea on a page
entitled "Getting Started." IOW, it might be a good idea to take a
known working combination of the above, zip them up and link to that
instead.
Bill Clementson
On Mon, Nov 17, 2008 at 4:21 PM, Raffael Cavallaro
<raffaelc...@gmail.com> wrote:
> As the mention of Aquamacs in the title suggests, I'm on Mac OS X.
> I've read Bill Clementson's Blog on setting up clojure, and I'm not
> exactly a neophyte - I've been using slime with sbcl, openmcl, and
> other lisps for years.
>
> Nevertheless, even starting with an absolutely blank .emacs and
> freshly downloaded copies of Aquamacs, clojure, swank-clojure, and
> clojure-mode, the instructions in Bill's blog do not yield a working
> clojure under slime.
Unfortunately (or, fortunately, depending on your perspective),
Clojure is a moving target and an emacs/slime configuration that
worked one month ago will not necessarily work today.
> I've managed to get M-x run-lisp to work with the more basic of the
> two clojure modes out there, so Bill's shell script in and of itself
> is not the problem at all (it also works fine from a terminal window).
> However, I've never gotten slime to work, so somehow it doesn't play
> nice with swank-clojure and/or clojure-mode and/or slime.
>
> Is there anyone who would be willing to post an *actual* .emacs (not
> "add this line...," .emacs files involve clobbering globals, so order
> really does matter), and links to the *actual* versions of clojure,
> slime, swank-clojure, and clojure-mode that together, produce a
> functioning clojure under slime/Aquamacs?
>
> As a side note, I might suggest that links to a combination of ever-
> changing git repositories might not be the very best idea on a page
> entitled "Getting Started." IOW, it might be a good idea to take a
> known working combination of the above, zip them up and link to that
> instead.
Rather than ask someone to assemble a package and post it for you, it
is usually nicer (and a better learning experience) if you list
exactly what you did, and post the minimal config scripts that you
tried out and which illustrate what didn't work for you. However,
since I recently upgraded to the latest Clojure, I'll share what
worked for me:
0. Delete (or move away) any old versions of the following (e.g. don't
assume that something you downloaded a couple of days ago is ok to
use)
1. Download latest Clojure from svn: http://sourceforge.net/svn/?group_id=137961
2. Download latest clojure-mode & swank-clojure from git:
http://github.com/jochu/
3. Download latest slime from cvs: http://common-lisp.net/project/slime/
4. Download latest clojure-contrib from svn:
http://sourceforge.net/svn/?group_id=223136
5. Use ant to build clojure and clojure-contrib
6. Create a shell script (called "clojure") to launch clojure and put
it in your PATH :
#!/bin/sh -e
java -server -cp /Users/bc/lisp/clojure/clojure/trunk/clojure.jar:\
/Users/bc/lisp/clojure/clojure-contrib/trunk/clojure-contrib.jar:\
clojure.lang.Repl
7. Put the following minimal setup in your .emacs file (adjusting the
paths as necessary):
(setq load-path (append (list "/Users/bc/lisp/clbuild/source/slime"
"/Users/bc/lisp/clbuild/source/slime/contrib"
"/Users/bc/lisp/clojure/clojure-mode"
"/Users/bc/lisp/clojure/swank-clojure")
load-path))
(setq swank-clojure-binary "clojure")
(require 'clojure-auto)
(require 'swank-clojure-autoload)
(defun run-clojure ()
"Starts clojure in Slime"
(interactive)
(slime 'clojure))
(global-set-key [f5] 'run-clojure)
(global-set-key [(control f11)] 'slime-selector)
(add-hook 'slime-connected-hook 'slime-redirect-inferior-output)
8. Restart Aquamacs and press F5 - you should get a repl
The above worked for me when I re-installed Clojure (with the latest
AOT changes) a couple of days ago. If you have any problems with the
above, post a reply with any errors you encountered as well as any
differences in your setup.
--
Bill Clementson
Raffael Cavallaro
On Nov 17, 8:43 pm, "Bill Clementson" <billc...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Rather than ask someone to assemble a package and post it for you, it
> is usually nicer (and a better learning experience) if you list
would be much better served if clojure.org site cached a combination
of the necessary elements of a working slime install, not that someone
post something for me alone.
The alternative is that new users end up chasing their tails because
several of the necessary elements are moving targets. The concept of
an actual stable release seems to be missing in the slime world as
well, and I'm not the only experienced lisp user to have voiced
misgivings about this state of affairs:
<http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/793b201a4ad3fb80?
hl=en>
Stumbling over regressions among multiple continually moving targets
is not a "learning experience," it is merely an excercise in
frustration. This is why projects have releases. Then other projects
can build against those releases, and combinations of multiple
interdependent projects can have known working versions.
Where such releases are not available the next best thing is to grab a
known working combination and cache it. Pointing at the continually
shifting sands of multiple repositories is a really good way to ensure
that only the most persistent and experienced will stick around very
long. One could cynically suggest that this is desirable, but I
actually believe that the clojure community does not want to drive
away newcomers (after all, look at the volume of excellent
documentation). Simply caching a set of known working components would
completely eliminate this issue.
Cosmin Stejerean
> exactly what you did, and post the minimal config scripts that you the
On Nov 17, 8:43 pm, "Bill Clementson" <billc...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Rather than ask someone to assemble a package and post it for you, it
> is usually nicer (and a better learning experience) if you list
> tried out and which illustrate what didn't work for you.I think you miss the point here. I'm suggesting that all new users
would be much better served if clojure.org site cached a combination
of the necessary elements of a working slime install, not that someone
post something for me alone.
Cosmin Stejerean
http://www.offbytwo.com
Raffael Cavallaro
On Nov 17, 11:55 pm, "Cosmin Stejerean" <cstejer...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Most of these projects change on a daily basis and so far I've never run
> into any issues using the latest version of each. During initial
> installation the chances of issues being due to user error are far greater
> than problems due to incompatible versions, and since getting in the habit
> of using the latest version (and updating regularly) is a good thing, I
> would recommend using the latest version to any newcomer and posting
> questions here including detailed explanation of what was tried and what
> happened.
versions of all these components , a *completely blank* .emacs, and a
freshly installed Aquamacs. IOW, a pristine, completely up to date
install. Just because it worked on the day you did your setup most
definitely does *not* mean this is a reliable procedure.
Project dependencies which "change on a daily basis" are a bug, not a
feature. For any given project, in this case clojure, there is no
virtue whatsoever to the fact that some other project such as slime
changes daily. Just pick a recent working version and say "we know
that all recent svn updates of clojure work with this version of slime/
swank-clojure/clojure-mode."
>Are you volunteering to maintain a relatively up to date cache of known good
> versions of these projects?
edge developers who want the very latest build of everything. If you
want the very latest slime, etc., you should be on your own.
regards,
Ralph
Raffael Cavallaro, Ph.D.
raffaelc...@mac.com
Cosmin Stejerean
Allow me to repeat that I was using the latest git cloned and cvs co'd
On Nov 17, 11:55 pm, "Cosmin Stejerean" <cstejer...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Most of these projects change on a daily basis and so far I've never run
> into any issues using the latest version of each. During initial
> installation the chances of issues being due to user error are far greater
> than problems due to incompatible versions, and since getting in the habit
> of using the latest version (and updating regularly) is a good thing, I
> would recommend using the latest version to any newcomer and posting
> questions here including detailed explanation of what was tried and what
> happened.
versions of all these components , a *completely blank* .emacs, and a
freshly installed Aquamacs. IOW, a pristine, completely up to date
install. Just because it worked on the day you did your setup most
definitely does *not* mean this is a reliable procedure.
Stuart Halloway
In some sense you can think of a cached stable install of some set of
developer tools as a performance optimization. In this case, the
performance being optimized is the developer's performance installing
a tool set.
Like any performance optimization, it should not be made prematurely.
Maybe the cost of managing the stable install outweighs the time
saved over developers just grabbing the various bits.
Your bad experience certainly suggests that it is time for a
prepackaged slime+clojure, --but--
> Remember the context: "Getting Started." The context is NOT bleeding
> edge developers who want the very latest build of everything. If you
> want the very latest slime, etc., you should be on your own.
If you are using Clojure you are somewhere in the neighborhood of the
bleeding edge. It isn't 1.0 yet.
I would love to see somebody step forward in the next few weeks and
announce a cached install that works. Then I could point to it in the
book before we go to print. :-)
Cheers,
Stuart
Raffael Cavallaro
On Nov 18, 1:46 am, "Cosmin Stejerean" <cstejer...@gmail.com> wrote:
> What kind of bugs are acceptable for the
> purpose of a known good combination? Is slime starting up sufficient?
"Getting Started."
BTW, it's this sort of thinking, that one wants to constantly update
because some bug or other may have been fixed in the latest svn/cvs
commit that leads to projects never making releases, which is a Bad
Thing(TM).
>
> Assuming some automated tests can be created to define the characteristics
> of a known good combination I'll volunteer to create a continuous
> integration server to report the status of trying to use the latest version
> of each project so interested users can quickly see if the most recent
> combination works, and if not look, at the history to find the most recent
> one that does. Is providing automated tests something you'd like to help
> with?
"Getting Started." Merely looking for "known to work even though it's
6 months old."
As the old chestnut goes, one never gets a second chance to make a
first impression. The first impression one gets now does *not* reflect
the quality of clojure at this point. The first impression one gets
now is "OK, broken, check back later." Clojure is more mature than
this, and the initial setup brokenness is easily solved by putting up
an archive of working versions of the various components even if they
grow to be many months old before they're refreshed. This would not
require an automated testing server, just a single tar command line
once or twice a year.
regards,
Ralph
Rich Hickey
The complexity here lies on the Emacs/Swank/Slime side, and the coordination it requires with a matching Clojure.
You can always grab the latest Clojure from svn, run ant, and have a working Repl with java -jar clojure.jar in under 30 seconds.
Might I suggest that for "Getting Started", Swank/Slime is a bit much? For many people, this will be their first use of Emacs. Perhaps some simple instructions for getting clojure-mode going would be better? Its functionality/complexity ratio seems much higher.
Also, I'd like not to imply that emacs+swank/slime is the only way, or a prerequisite for using Clojure. There's a mode for vim, and there's also enclojure, something for TextMate, etc.
Let's not make getting started any harder than it need be. People can move up to swank/slime when they are ready.
Rich
Matt Revelle
On Nov 18, 2008, at 9:42 AM, Raffael Cavallaro <raffaelc...@gmail.com
SWANK component needs to be updated. A package like you request would
have to include a stale version of Clojure. Once Clojure has a 1.0
release it will make sense for all development tools to provide
packages releases known to work.
>
>
> As the old chestnut goes, one never gets a second chance to make a
> first impression. The first impression one gets now does *not* reflect
> the quality of clojure at this point. The first impression one gets
> now is "OK, broken, check back later." Clojure is more mature than
> this, and the initial setup brokenness is easily solved by putting up
> an archive of working versions of the various components even if they
> grow to be many months old before they're refreshed. This would not
> require an automated testing server, just a single tar command line
> once or twice a year.
to streamline Emacs/SLIME support for particular revisions of
Clojure. But since Clojure is bleeding edge and Emacs/SLIME users are
usually tinkerers there hasn't been enough of a demand to warrant the
effort. I expect this will change as soon as 1.0 is released.
>
>
> regards,
>
> Ralph
>
>
>
> >
Bill Clementson
<raffaelc...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Nov 18, 1:46 am, "Cosmin Stejerean" <cstejer...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> What kind of bugs are acceptable for the
>> purpose of a known good combination? Is slime starting up sufficient?
>
> It's a whole lot better than slime *not* starting up. Again, context:
> "Getting Started."
Maybe the "Getting Started" section of the wiki shouldn't point
beginners towards slime. Once someone is accustomed to using Clojure
with Emacs, they will appreciate the power of slime; however, to get
started, clojure-mode is more than sufficient. You should also
probably eliminate clojure-contrib and the separate clojure binary
from the "Getting Started" steps. The minimal steps to get started
with clojure and emacs then become:
1. Download latest Clojure from svn: http://sourceforge.net/svn/?group_id=137961
2. Download latest clojure-mode from git: http://github.com/jochu/
3. Use ant to build clojure
4. Put the following minimal setup in your .emacs file (adjusting the
paths as necessary):
(setq inferior-lisp-program "java -server -cp
/Users/bc/lisp/clojure/clojure/trunk/clojure.jar clojure.lang.Repl")
(pushnew "/Users/bc/lisp/clojure/clojure-mode" load-path
(require 'clojure-auto)
5. Restart Emacs. Load a clojure (clj) file in a buffer, press C-c C-z
to get a repl.
That is far simpler to get setup and the user can focus on clojure
rather than slime as they're getting started with the language.
--
Bill Clementson
bc
setup instructions in my earlier weblog post (http://bc.tech.coop/blog/
081023.html), I've added an update at the bottom of the post. I never
intended that post to be a tutorial for others to follow, it was
simply a recounting of what I did to get going with Clojure. I have
also written a new post which describes a simpler "newbie" set of
instructions that doesn't include SLIME (http://bc.tech.coop/blog/
081118.html).
--
Bill Clementson
Asbjørn Bjørnstad
On Nov 19, 12:08 am, Matt Revelle <mreve...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Nov 18, 2008, at 9:42 AM, Raffael Cavallaro <raffaelcavall...@gmail.com
> > As the old chestnut goes, one never gets a second chance to make a
> > first impression. The first impression one gets now does *not* reflect
> > the quality of clojure at this point. The first impression one gets
> > now is "OK, broken, check back later." Clojure is more mature than
> > this, and the initial setup brokenness is easily solved by putting up
> > an archive of working versions of the various components even if they
> > grow to be many months old before they're refreshed. This would not
> > require an automated testing server, just a single tar command line
> > once or twice a year.
>
> Sure, you're absolutely correct that more effort could have been made
> to streamline Emacs/SLIME support for particular revisions of
> Clojure. But since Clojure is bleeding edge and Emacs/SLIME users are
> usually tinkerers there hasn't been enough of a demand to warrant the
> effort. I expect this will change as soon as 1.0 is released.
started page that talks about setting up slime just points to a
version of slime/swank that works with the latest release version of
Clojure, the problems with version mismatches should be reduced.
-asbjxrn
Daniel Renfer
package containing a version of clojure, emacs, slime, swank-clojure,
clojure-mode, and clojure-contrib. This could be as simple as a zip
file, but even better would be to have a simple installer exe.
All a new user would have to would be to download the exe, run it, and
choose emacs from their start menu. Everything would already be
configured to work with whatever version these tools were built
against. You could even install links to clojure
documentation/resource sites. (clojure.org, the wiki, the irc logs,
projecture, etc.)
I, of course, focus on Windows users because they are the people that
would most appreciate an all-in-one installer package. You could
easily create packages for OSX and distros of Linux.
This wouldn't help those that already have a running version emacs
that they're trying to set up, but that's what the other documentation
sites are for.
Does anyone have experience in creating windows installers like this?
I could look into it if people think it's a good idea, but I'm
inexperienced in these matters.
As a side note, those of you that are feeling the pain of keeping all
of these packages up to date, I highly recommend using MR[1]. All I
have to do is issue a `mr update` from my command line to pull in the
latest versions of all of these packages.
[1]: http://joey.kitenet.net/code/mr/
Daniel E. Renfer
mosi
thank you for helping the beginners like me with the setup of emacs,
slime and clojure.
I tried first the official method described elsewhere on this forum -
ubuntu linux instructions.
Unsuccessful.
Following your instructions, the same issue, my linux emacs22 gets to
this point:
(add-classpath "file:////install/swank-clojure/")
(require (quote swank))
(swank/ignore-protocol-version "2008-11-23")
(swank/start-server "/tmp/slime.10616" :encoding "iso-latin-1-unix")
Clojure
user=> nil
user=> nil
user=> "2008-11-23"
user=> Connection opened on local port 58654
58654
user=>
And waits for connection. The socket (or a file?) /tmp/slime.xxxx does
not exist. Connection time-out causes an error - waiting for slime
session to connect to swank server.
My impression is: the swank server never started. Probably swank-
clojure broken? I have the latest git version as of 07.12.2008.
Any ideas?
thanks a lot.
mosi
On Nov 18, 2:43 am, "Bill Clementson" <billc...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Raffael,
>
> On Mon, Nov 17, 2008 at 4:21 PM, Raffael Cavallaro
>
Bill Clementson
You said that you followed my instructions; however, the protocol
version that prints out in the inferior-lisp buffer is "2008-11-23".
In my version of SLIME (which is several days old) the protocol
version that prints out in the inferior-lisp buffer is "2008-12-02".
If you have a swank-clojure from 07.12.2008, I suspect (at least) your
SLIME install is older than that. Therefore, I would suggest that you
repeat steps 1-5 (from my original email) to make certain you really
have compatible versions of each package.
- Bill
mosi
it seems I found the tick with swank-clojure, slime and emacs.
Swank/clojure works only if the user is not root. (Or so it seems on
my linux setup)
Following your instructions on http://bc.tech.coop/blog/081023.html
if the user is root, swank-clojure spawns a server listening on a
given port, and the slime (or for that matter any other program, e.g.
telnet) cannot connect to the given port.
Nevermind the protocol version, the bug is reproducible with both of
them, "2008-11-23" and "2008-12-07".
Installation: debian lenny up-to-date 12/2008.
Emacs 21, Emacs 22, X or text versions
Slime from repository and git slime from 12/2008 tested
swank/clojure "2008-12-07" and newer tested.
I didn`t find out if the bug is in my linux config (no firewall
installed, no selinux) or in any of the packages (Emacs?)
It`s probably not slime. Slime works with sbcl and clisp.
Could anybody confirm/reject my wild assumtions?
Have a nice day,
mosi
PS: Thanx Feng hou for helping to find out the most basic swank-
clojure setup. It was not clear from the docs, that the following is
needed to start:
(swank/start-server "/dev/null" :port 4005 :dont-close true)
In all the web tutorials the old function name is used.
On Dec 9, 2:10 am, "Bill Clementson" <billc...@gmail.com> wrote:
Bill Clementson
On Thu, Dec 11, 2008 at 4:22 PM, mosi <skaw...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> it seems I found the tick with swank-clojure, slime and emacs.
>
> Swank/clojure works only if the user is not root. (Or so it seems on
> my linux setup)
extremely dangerous.
Bill
mosi
found the error. It was the linux setup.
The portmap daemon was interfering with the swank server.
If the portmap is stopped, everything works fine.
Running everything as a root?
I like to live on the edge of a cliff, gives me a nice buzz high ;-)
You don`t?
Bye,
mosi
On Dec 12, 1:34 am, "Bill Clementson" <billc...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi mosi,
> On Thu, Dec 11, 2008 at 4:22 PM, mosi <skawan...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > it seems I found the tick with swank-clojure, slime and emacs.
>
> > Swank/clojure works only if the user is not root. (Or so it seems on
> > my linux setup)
>
> Why would you want to run swank-clojure as root? That would be
> extremely dangerous.
>
> Bill
>
Mark H.
on your blog! :-D
One thing that tripped me up was that my .emacs was loading a custom
SLIME (since I use the .emacs for Emacs 21 as well as Emacs 22, and
Emacs 21 does not come with SLIME by default). The custom SLIME was
an older version and so _everything_ was messed up ;-P but not
requiring 'slime also caused troubles. I ended up inserting the
following
(require 'slime)
(slime-setup)
before the following lines in your .emacs:
(require 'clojure-auto)
(require 'swank-clojure-autoload)
That seemed to help matters. Now I'm using Clojure a lot more because
I don't have to cut and paste between Emacs and the shell prompt ;-)
Many thanks!
mfh