[ANN] 2021 ... and Clojure 1.10 alpha release

[dmiller2718]

To get 2021 off to a good start, I am pleased to announce an alpha release of version 1.10 for ClojureCLR.

What: ClojureCLR, Version 1.10.0, alpha1

Platforms supported:  

   net461

   netcoreapp3.1

   net5.0

Status: 

   feature complete match to ClojureJVM 1.10

   this release is alpha to test deployment

   netcoreapp3.1 and net5.0 do not support saving assemblies, so there is no AOT-compilation.  

       As a result, startup times are slower on these platforms and some features, such as genclass, do not work. 

   

The code itself seems solid.  However, distribution and modes of running have changed, so if some hardy individuals would like to do a little testing, I'd be grateful.

   

Because of the distinctions between net461 and the other two frameworks, there are some differences in how to get things going.

Getting a REPL for netcoreapp3.1 and net5.0:

--------------------------------------------

Two possibilities here: a zip from sourceforge or installing ClojureCLR as a dotnet tool.

SourceForge:

From https://sourceforge.net/projects/clojureclr/, download one of 

   clojure-clr-1.10.0-alpha1-Debug-netcoreapp3.1.zip 

   clojure-clr-1.10.0-alpha1-Debug-net5.0.zip 

Unzip it somewhere, put that place in your path if you like.  You can the REPL via either one of these

  Clojure.Main.exe                    -- this is a Windows-only executable  

  dotnet Clojure.Main.dll             -- should work in all platforms

   

dotnet tool:

There is a nuget package of Clojure.Main as an installable tool.

Tools can be installed globally or locally.  I'll discuss global installation here.

  dotnet tool install --global --version 1.10.0-alpha1 Clojure.Main

(The --version is needed only because this is pre-release.)

At this point you can invoke the REPL by

   clojure.main

See https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/tools/global-tools-how-to-use and  https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/tools/local-tools-how-to-use for more details on installing, updating, local vs global, etc. for dotnet tools.

Note that there is no Clojure.Compile.exe for these frameworks.

Getting a REPL for net461:

--------------------------

From https://sourceforge.net/projects/clojureclr/, download clojure-clr-1.10.0-alpha1-Debug-net4.6.1.zip.  Unzip it somewhere, put that in your path if you like.  You can run either of

  Clojure.Main461.exe  

  Clojure.Compile.exe              -- compiles the clj files on the command line.

  

Project dependency only:

------------------------

If you just want Clojure.dll and supporting files, say as dependency for C# project, you can just download the nuget package for Clojure. (https://www.nuget.org/packages/Clojure/).   Clojure.dll and related are targeted for netstandard2.0 and netstandard2.1 and so should run on .Net Framework 4.6.1 and above, .Net Core 3.1, and .Net 5.0  (Remember to search for pre-release versions in order to pick up this alpha release).

Unlike past distributions, this package no longer has Clojure.Main.exe and Clojure.Compile.exe in a tools subdirectory that you have to move around. See above.

Next steps

----------

I hope to proceed quickly to a final release.  While waiting for feedback on these deployment options, I will be working to bring the code up to the about-to-be-released clojure-1.10.2.  And then a short beta release for testing.  Updating the wiki pages. Then 1.10 will be done.

With 1.10 out of the way, I'd like to turn attention to other critical tasks to make ClojureCLR better.  Among them:

(a) a rewrite of the compiler to do a better job handling CLR-specific constructs, such as value types and generics.

(b) reproduce the functionality of CLI and deps.edn, including figuring out project structure, artifact management, and related items.

    I'm still using lein-clr to handle the libraries that support ClojureCLR.  My heart aches every time I go to a new maching and have to download Java and ClojureJVM just to do my work.  Independence!

(c) VS Code support, anyone?

(d) Suggestions welcomed....

-David

[dmiller2718]

Oh, yes, if you've been following along with my attempts to get up on Core3 and Net5, all that work on the newframework branch of the repo has now been merged back into the master branch.

For now, development will continue in the latter.

-David

[dmiller2718]

Correcting one misstatement:

I stated: "Clojure.dll and related are targeted for netstandard2.0 and netstandard2.1 and so should run on .Net Framework 4.6.1 and above, .Net Core 3.1, and .Net 5.0."

Actually Clojure.dll itself, and some of the dependences, are targeted for netstandard2.1 and net461.  I forgot that I could not compile Clojure itself against netstandard2.0 because the latter is missing some Type-related methods.  Sigh.

Let me know when I can drop 4.x support.  Life will be easier.