Counterclockwise past present future

State of Counterclockwise: Past, Present and Future http://bit.ly/counterclockwise by Laurent Petit @laurentpetit first.clojure-conj.org - 2010/10/22

Agenda ● Presentations / Intro ● History / Figures ● Installation ● Features / quick demos ● Future ● Credits ● Q&A

Presentations 1/2 ● Me ● Laurent Petit, french ● Fond of Clojure since Q2 2008 ● Involved in Counterclockwise since Q4 2008

Presentations 2/2 ● Eclipse ● multi-language software development environment ● Primary target language/platform: Java/JVM ● Eclipse Foundation claims “millions” of users, worldwide ● Counterclockwise ● An Eclipse extension for managing Clojure-based projects ● License : EPL ● “ccw” for short

Intro 1/2 ● Counterclockwise is an Eclipse plugin helping developers write Clojure code ● Why an Eclipse plugin ? ● Targetting a large base of java developers ● Driving forces : writing Eclipse plugins both at work & at home ! ● Want Clojure for my next paid java project !

Intro 2/2 ● Installing Counterclockwise and starting testing/developing in clojure is really just a matter of minutes!

Intro 2/2 ● Installing Counterclockwise and starting testing/developing in clojure is really just a matter of minutes! ● Ease of installation = maximize a good first impression with the language (like it or not !)

Intro 2/2 ● Installing Counterclockwise and starting testing/developing in clojure is really just a matter of minutes! ● Ease of installation = maximize a good first impression with the language (like it or not !) ● No-brainer integration into Eclipse java users' toolset – Parens will already feel UFOs to them, let the IDE get out of their way and help them concentrate on the concepts

Intro 2/2 ● Installing Counterclockwise and starting testing/developing in clojure is really just a matter of minutes! ● Ease of installation = maximize a good first impression with the language (like it or not !) ● No-brainer integration into Eclipse java users' toolset – Parens will feel alien enough to new users, let the IDE get out of their way and help them concentrate on the concepts ● But should provide same interactive “dynamic” experience

History ● Started in 2008 ● By Casey Marshall, code name “clojure-dev” ● Joined on October 2008 ● Casey left the team early 2009 ... ● … got the “de-facto” leadership since then

Figures (google analytics) Homepage – 2000 views per month ● Since March 1, 2010: ● ~ 4000 different visitors – 800-900 average different visitors per month ● ~2000 homepage views per month ● ~2000 documentation page views per month

Installation ● Super easy ● Use Eclipse 3.6 Helios' Market place – Menu Help > Eclipse Market Place – search for “clojure” & click ● Super fast ● 6 Mb download

Editor features 1/2 ● Syntactic coloration (stable) ● Strictly speaking, “token-based” coloration ● “rainbow” parens (and higlight, and jump to/from) ● Around the corner: true syntactic coloration (full use of parser's info) ● Structural edition commands (stable) ● based on emac's paredit.el (~ 80% commands currently ported) ● Totally reusable outside Eclipse context (pure clojure) ● Jump to definition (stable) ● Only to clojure global vars for now on ... ● Auto-indentation (stable) ● Predictable behaviour with & without support of dynamic environment ● But judged “too simple” by increasing number of users ...

Editor features 2/2 ● Code completion (incomplete) ● Clojure top level vars ● Java – Clojure is “backward” – full search in the project's classpath) – → slow ! ● REPL interaction commands (stable) ● Documentation hover (around the corner) ● Code Outline (unstable) ● Missing: formatting, macro-expansion

Editor demo ● Structural edition modes ● Default mode – does not break habit ● Strict mode – mixed free/guided mode ● Underused structural edition commands ● Both modes – Structure-based selection – Raise over parent – Split / Join ● Strict mode only – Easy wrapping

Project management feature ● Compliant with Eclipse's notion of project ● Project “natures” : composable with JDT nature, etc. ● “Running the project” uses “enhanced” java- nature-based “launch configuration” ● Enabled to quickly provide out-of-the-box interactivity

Interactive Dev feature1/2 ● REPL' state of the art (v0.0.64) ● Based on the Java nature of the project – Uses the project's classpath – Same configuration tabs as the java's ● But limited in scope ... – Forces the project to start with a stdin/stdout-based REPL class (e.g. clojure.main or clojure.contrib.repl-ln) – Not possible to work with web projects (WTP), GWT projects, Eclipse projects (PDE) ● … and in features – Plain text edition (no colors, no user assistance) – No history

Interactive Dev feature 2/2 ● Brand new REPL around the corner ! ● Based on cemerick's nREPL client/server REPL library ● And on cemerick's rework of the Graphical REPLView ! ● Connection to any JVM running a nREPL client ● No more need for special “launch configuration” ● => composable with projects of any kind (Web WTP, GWT, AppEngine, etc.) ● Rich set of feature for the REPL View ● Shares source code editor featureset: colors, structural edition, code completion (wip), navigation commands, etc. ● Colorized logs ● Recall previously entered commands (wip) ● Multiline (with auto-indentation!) command area

Interactive Dev demo ● “launch” your project ● auto-reload-on-save enabled or disabled – Agile feature design at work ! :-) ● Exclusivity: new REPL View ! ● Same feature set as editor ● Receive code from the editor ● Namespace browser ● Embedded search engine ● Click to jump to definition

Debugger feature ● Features ● Place breakpoints in clojure code ● Leverage the classic Eclipse integrated java debugger ● Still a little bit unstable ● Future work ● Does not (yet) filter frames related to the internals of clojure (clojure.lang.*) ● Integration with George Jahad's CDT debugger

Future – features around the corner ● Editor ● Jump to definition (java) ● Documentation hover (clojure & java) ● True syntax-based coloration (locals, etc.) ● Project management ● More “orthogonality” with underlying “project nature” (pure java, GWT, WTP, AppEngine, Eclipse RCP, etc.) ● REPL ● Port features of the editor ● And then … towards “graphical REPL” (ability to display “binary” return values as images, HTML, charts, etc.)

Future – other features ● Refactoring features ● Integration of tcrayford's clojure-refactoring project ● Hopefully bidirectional java ↔ clojure ● Debugging features ● Integration with George Jahad's Clojure Debugging Toolkit (CDT)

Future – “dream-about” features ● More “warnings” than what the compiler has to offer ● Help enforcing conventions ● Help detect potential bugs (more than one statement inside dosync, local same name as global, etc., etc.) ● → No hurry, 'cause “cinc” may be a game changer ... ● “AI-like” User suggestions ● Analyse user's habits through heuristics (and occurrence) ● Non-invasive (hard part !) suggestions

Future - Miscellaneous ● Introduction of Contributor Agreement ● Better juridical protection for project's code ● Better protection of sponsor's rights on project “as a whole” ● copy&paste of Clojure's one, just names changed ● Switch to “semantic versioning” ● “embedded” REPL for ccw own's development ● Open the door to more contributors ● devs: – mvn based build process – Continuous integration ● users: – Update Sites for “beta” versions as well as “stable” version – Opening the plugin to user contributions (in clojure, of course)

Share, ... ● Past & current contributors ● Casey Marshall (first versions of ccw) ● Stephan Müehlstraßer (preference pages, online help, labrepl support) ● Christophe Grand (Debug breakpoints) ● Manuel Woelker (Source code outline) ● Miaubiz, clooney (editor commands:navigate to definition, etc.) ● Nicolas Lambert (Outline commands) ● Chas Emerick (integration with nREPL, REPLView)

… reuse, ● vimClojure (@kotarak): code completion ● parsley (@cgrand): source code parser ● clojure.osgi (@aav): clojure+OSGi love story ● nREPL (@cemerick): REPL client/server library

… give back. ● Structural Editor ● paredit.clj (github) ● Clojure Grammar ● ccw.parsers.clojure (github, wip, no rush please)

Where to find it ● Google code home page ● http://code.google.com/p/counterclockwise/ ● Google groups ● Users : http://groups.google.com/group/clojuredev- users (66 members) ● Devs : http://groups.google.com/group/clojuredev-devel (37 members)

Thanks for attending! (can you wake up your neighbor pliz ?)

Counterclockwise past present future

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