Intellij / Cursive set up

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Hi everyone,

How are you?

I am on W10 and I successfully installed lein and it is running on cmd.

I was wondering the workflow using cursive and how to set up to work properly and evaluate the code on the fly.

Thanks.

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Hello!

I’d create a new project with lein new and use Cursive’s import to create a project from the lein sources. Then you can create a REPL configuration for Leiningen, start a REPL and send expressions to it.

Where specifically do you get stuck?

Also, the video you posted looks dated. I followed the instructions on the website:

https://cursive-ide.com/userguide/index.html

https://cursive-ide.com/userguide/repl.html

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Thanks Teodorlu,

I can run functions besides the main on a project.

What would be the workflow using Intellij/Cursive?

After you write a function, just call on the repl, like so: (function)

That’s it?
If this is right, looks like intellij is not saving other function on my project and REPL don’t know them.

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ok, uninstalled everything and got it working.

The repl inside the intellij, the problem was the name space I needed to add (ns-project.core), initial tests are working.

I was wondering how to set up the perfect development experience on intellij / Cursive.

Thanks.

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I avoid manually typing in the REPL buffer, and rather send expressions from the source code to be evaluated. @vvvvalvalval has written some really good content on how to use the REPL.

  1. Introduction: The REPL based development demo video from his What makes a good REPL article
  2. Follow up: The official Programming at the REPL guide.
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Thanks.

I appreciated your help!!

https://clojure.org/guides/repl/introduction
Figure 2. An editor-integrated Clojure REPL

On the second figure, on Intellij, it shows writing code on intellij and running on repl automatically, giving the answers, how can I do that?
image

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You need to add a Local repl as a Run Configuration, explained here: Cursive: The REPL

Once you have a REPL running for your project, you need to use the shortcuts:

  • Alt-Shift-P - will evaluate the top-level form your cursor is on in the REPL
  • Alt-Shift-L - will load the file you are in, into the REPL
  • Alt-Shift-M - will load all modified files into your REPL
  • Alt-Shift-R - will change the REPL namespace to the one of the file you are in

And I recommend you go in File -> Settings -> Keymap and search for Send form before caret to REPL and add the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Enter for it. You can leave other assignments for it, I don’t believe they conflict.

That way, you can just put your cursor (caret) at the end of any s-expr and evaluate the s-expr into the REPL by pressing: Ctrl+Enter.

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Thanks didibus, so there is no way to evalute the code on the fly like nighcode?
https://sekao.net/nightcode/

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Not to my knowledge. Maybe you can setup a save action to perform “Synchronize with repl”. I havn’t tried it though.

Cider has such a mode though, if you are willing to run Emacs. That said, in my experience, it can get a bit out of hand. And I prefer being in charge of when to send things to the REPL.

The gif is definitly just someone using the keyboard shortcut in a timely manner, which makes it appear as if it is automatic.

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Here’s an example of what I meant.

It is on the fly, no?

How did he defined the namespace?

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Cool, I learnt how to do that on Intellij, kind of……with alt+shift+P.

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When LightTable first appeared, one of the things that got me excited about it was the auto-eval mode. When I actually used it, I found it was terribly distracting for real-world code, because it would evaluate code before I’d finished a form so I’d get errors, or if I typed something incorrectly, it might run side-effect-y code and “launch missiles” (the usual joke in Clojure conference talks about evaluating code with side-effects). So I stopped using it and just got used to using hotkeys to evaluate each completed form as I typed.

I switched from LightTable to Emacs for a while and then to Atom/ProtoREPL. It also had an auto-eval mode so I tried it again but very quickly turned it off, for exactly the same reasons that made me abandon it in LightTable.

Now I use Atom/Chlorine and, like every editor I’ve used with Clojure since 2010, I use hotkeys to evaluate a form or a top-level form, whenever I want. It’s a very productive workflow, with no distracting “partial evaluations” done by the system unexpectedly.

(This is also why I dislike auto-runners for tests – I tend to evaluate code forms as I write them and I save files periodically regardless of the state they are in, so having tests run-on-save by a watcher is pointless at best and very distracting! Instead, I run tests via hotkeys whenever I want to sanity check something specific since I’m continually running code in the REPL via hotkeys to make sure it does what I expect)

1 Like
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Thanks Sean, but I believe for a beginner this auto eval could be helpfull.

I will try the Atom/Protorepl with auto eval and let you know.

Thanks.

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