I’ve always been registered independent, despite voting for the Democratic party most of the time. I don’t like that people identify as Democrat vs. Republican, or Liberal vs. Conservative, or whatever. I prefer looking at the policies of candidates, what issues they find important, and what character they show. Given that, I don’t care what label they choose for themselves.
Just jotting down some notes while trying to get CEPL working on my oldish MacBook Pro running El Capitan.
swank:*communication-style* nil to work with it, and things will just break horribly
if you end up off the main thread in CEPL. SBCL works fine.~/.swank.lisp:
#+sbcl (setf swank:*communication-style* nil)~/Libraries/Frameworks.Repositories you’ll need to clone locally:
Actually running it in SLIME:
.swank.lisp set up, and Emacs configured to use SBCL, start SLIME
as normal. (e.g. M-x slime)(ql:quickload "cepl.sdl2")(cepl:repl 480 320 3.3)Again, I can’t get the examples to run directly, but you can run the triangle example below by:
(ql:quickload "livesupport"). The examples use it to keep your
REPL usable while Swank is in single-threaded mode.(triangle::run-loop) to start it, and hit enter an extra time to get your REPL back.(triangle::stop-loop) to stop it.(in-package :cl-user)
(defpackage :triangle
(:use #:cl #:cepl #:livesupport))
(in-package :triangle)
(defparameter *array* nil)
(defparameter *stream* nil)
(defparameter *running* nil)
(defstruct-g pos-col
(position :vec3 :accessor pos)
(color :vec4 :accessor col))
(defun-g tri-vert ((vert pos-col))
(values (v! (pos vert) 1.0)
(col vert)))
(defun-g tri-frag ((color :vec4))
color)
(def-g-> prog-1 ()
tri-vert tri-frag)
(defun step-demo ()
(step-host)
(update-repl-link)
(clear)
(map-g #'prog-1 *stream*)
(swap))
(defun run-loop ()
(setf *running* t
*array* (make-gpu-array (list (list (v! 0.5 -0.36 0) (v! 0 1 0 1))
(list (v! 0 0.5 0) (v! 1 0 0 1))
(list (v! -0.5 -0.36 0) (v! 0 0 1 1)))
:element-type 'pos-col)
*stream* (make-buffer-stream *array*))
(loop :while (and *running* (not (shutting-down-p))) :do
(continuable (step-demo))))
(defun stop-loop ()
(setf *running* nil))We use SQLite4Java at work, and I’m playing around with our databases from Clojure at the moment and just wanted to quickly jot down how to do it.
First, native library management in SQLite4Java is a little hairy: it’s going to look
for the libraries either in java.library.path, sqlite4java.library.path, alongside
the SQLite4Java jar file, or you can explicitly tell it where to find things. The
Maven config to do this automatically is suitably ugly, and as far
as I know, there’s not a good way to do the same thing with Leiningen.
I opted to just explicitly tell it for now. I list the SQLite4Java dependency in my
project.clj, copied the native libraries I’m interested in into ${project.dir}/natives,
and then just added this at startup time:
(let [native-dir (clojure.java.io/file (System/getProperty "user.dir") "natives")]
(com.almworks.sqlite4java.SQLite/setLibraryPath (str native-dir)))(I’m leaving all of the namespace components in there to be explicit: I require/import them as normal in my code.)
Next issue: actually running queries against a database has to be done using a SQLiteConnection instance, and those instances are limited to being used from the thread that created them. That precludes using them from the REPL: you don’t have any control over what thread your expressions are going to be executed from. So, you need to use SQLiteQueue, which wraps a SQLiteConnection and ensures all calls come from a single thread.
SQLiteQueue works by taking SQLiteJob instances (basically just a function) and running them in first-in-first-out order. Unfortunately, SQLiteQueue can’t just take a Callable, so you can’t use Clojure functions directly. Wrapping a function up in a job is pretty easy though, and is the first time I’ve needed to use clojure.core/proxy:
(defn job
"Returns a SQLiteJob proxy that calls the given function."
[job-fn]
(proxy [com.almworks.sqlite4java.SQLiteJob]
[]
(job [^SQLiteConnection conn]
(job-fn conn))))Then using those jobs is done by calling SQLiteQueue::execute, which returns the job again. Those jobs implement Future, so you can use them as normal, or they have a convenience method SQLiteJob::complete that deals with exceptions for you.
(def get-all-user-ids
(job
(fn [^SQLiteConnection conn]
(let [query (.prepare conn "SELECT id FROM users")]
(try (loop [ids []
continue (.step query)]
(if-not continue
ids
(recur (conj ids (.columnLong query 0)) (.step query))))
(finally (.dipose query)))))))
(.complete (.execute queue get-all-user-ids))So all bundled together, my little library for working with SQLite4Java looks like this right now:
(ns jfischer.db
(:require [clojure.java.io :as io])
(:import [com.almworks.sqlite4java SQLiteQueue
SQLiteConnection
SQLiteJob]))
(defn open-db
"Creates (and starts, because I'm forever forgetting to .start it at
the REPL) a SQLiteQueue instance. The zero-argument version opens an
in-memory database, otherwise give it a filename."
([] (open-db nil))
([filename]
(.start (SQLiteQueue. (io/file filename)))))
(defn job
"Returns a SQLiteJob proxy that calls the given function."
[job-fn]
(proxy [SQLiteJob]
[]
(job [^SQLiteConnection conn]
(job-fn conn))))
(defn exec-job
"Runs the given job on the database queue and returns its result."
[^SQLiteQueue db
^SQLiteJob job]
(.complete (.execute db job)))Really quick: after dismissing Clojure for years (I have Common Lisp, I don’t care about the JVM, why do I need it?) I finally took the time to learn it about a year ago and OMG I love it and I want to use it for everything (much to the dismay of my team at work).
One of the pain points though is how project-based everything seems to be: if you want to pull in any sort of third party library, you have to build some sort of project, be it Maven, Leiningen, or something similar. List the libraries you want to pull in there and start (or restart) your REPL before you can use them.
Coming from Quicklisp, it’s super annoying, especially if you just want to give something a quick spin.
Enter Boot! It’s a relatively new way to handle building Clojure projects, but it allows you to easily name dependencies when you run it, like so:
$ boot -d com.google.code.gson/gson:2.5 replThat gives me a REPL with Gson loaded and ready to use.
boot.user=> (import [com.google.gson Gson JsonObject])
com.google.gson.JsonObject
boot.user=> (def o (JsonObject.))
#'boot.user/o
boot.user=> (.addProperty o "hello" "world")
nil
boot.user=> (.toJson (Gson.) o)
"{\"hello\":\"world\"}"
boot.user=>To make life a little easier, I have a task in my ~/.boot/profile.boot that
pulls in the dependencies Cider needs:
(deftask cider
"Switch up the default dependencies and middleware to support cider-nrepl."
[]
(require 'boot.repl)
(swap! @(resolve 'boot.repl/*default-dependencies*)
concat '[[org.clojure/tools.nrepl "0.2.12"]
[cider/cider-nrepl "0.10.1"]])
(swap! @(resolve 'boot.repl/*default-middleware*)
concat '[cider.nrepl/cider-middleware])
identity)So when I want to tool around with something, I just run boot -d whatever:version cider repl,
fire up Emacs, connect and go to work.
I haven’t take the time to get comfortable with Boot for full projects yet, so I’m still using Leiningen for most things, but I love it for quick one-off experiments. It’s not as good as being able to load whatever I want from the comfort of the REPL, but it makes things a lot less painful.
I’m pretty sure that every time I’ve built a web application of any sort in the last decade, I’ve reached for a database. Usually SQLite, at least to start, because it lets me get going fast without any infrastructure in place. It’s not even a question, really: if I’m building a web app, it needs a database of some kind behind it.
Actually, let me rewind just a smidge. I really dig Clojure lately, and my favorite thing about it are the immutable data structures: once you’ve created your map, or vector, or whatever, you can’t change it. Instead, you can derive new things from it. Now that I’m comfortable working with immutable by default things, working without them feels almost like I’m building on shaky foundations.