Does Clojure have a configuration file similar to ~/.clisprc.lisp? - configuration

Question

On my platform, I need to add (set! *compile-path* (str *compile-path* ":.")) in order for (compile) to find my scripts. I'd prefer not to have to type that every time I want to compile something.

Answer 1

The easiest way to handle setting your "compile path" in Clojure is to use a build tool like Leiningen or Cake to manage your project. Using these tools, you get an idiomatic project structure, all your source code automatically on the compile/class path, and nice command-line tools to handle dependency retrieval, running unit tests and building your projects.
Here are some of the basic command-line tasks defined by Leiningen, and thus available to you in any project:
classpath Show the classpath of the current project.
clean Remove compiled artifacts and jars from project.
compile Compile Clojure source into .class files.
deps Download all dependencies and place them in the :library-path.
help Display a list of tasks or help for a given task.
install Install the current project or download the project specified.
interactive Enter interactive shell for calling tasks without relaunching JVM.
jar Package up all the project's files into a jar file.
javac Compile Java source files.
new Create a new project skeleton.
plugin Manage user-level plugins.
pom Write a pom.xml file to disk for Maven interop.
repl Start a repl session either with the current project or standalone.
run Run a -main function with optional command-line arguments.
swank Launch swank server for Emacs to connect.
test Run the project's tests.
test! Run a project's tests after cleaning and fetching dependencies.
uberjar Package up all the project's files and dependencies into a jar file.
So you start a new project by running lein new <name of project>, which generates a standard directory structure for a Clojure project. After you've written your code, you can run lein compile to simply compile your Clojure source, or you can go right to lein jar to package your code as a Jar file. For an executable jar that includes the Clojure language and all dependencies necessary to run your program, use lein uberjar instead.
If you don't use these tools, then you need to manage the classpath manually, to include where you store your dependency jars and where your source code lives. I highly recommend using one of the above-mentioned build tools.

Answer 2

You can specify -i when running Clojure to have it evaluate a file when starting up.
Below is the script I use to run Clojure as an example:
#!/bin/bash
# GUI mode
if [ "$1" != "--no-fork" ]; then
gnome-terminal -t Clojure -x $0 --no-fork $* &
exit
fi
shift
breakchars="(){}[],^%$##\"\";:''|\\"
if [ -f project.clj ]; then
lein repl
else
rlwrap --remember -c -b "$breakchars" \
java -Djava.ext.dirs=$HOME/.clojure clojure.main \
-i $HOME/.clojurerc --repl
fi

Answer 3

Leiningen will load ~/.lein/init.clj every time it launches. In addition, you can add a :repl-init key to your project.clj files to have that namespace loaded in each repl. Clojure is really not meant to be used standalone without any supporting tools, so calling (compile [...]) on your own is almost never the right answer.

Answer 4

In Clojure this is managed at the Java level (classpath etc) rather than having a .rc file. When I first started programming in Clojure I had a bash script that I would run, but now I use Leiningen.