One of the things that I found really hard when starting with Clojure is handling dependencies. I come from a PHP and JS background so composer and npm were the standard to me. I also worked with some Ruby projects, and gem is also cool.

They all have something in common: a way to remove/add dependencies by simply using a command followed by the name of the package. Like in npm:

# latest version
npm install package-name

# specific version
npm install package-name@version

The Clojure Way

If you find yourself trying to add a dependency on a Clojure project you will find yourself having to copy and paste the dependency "token" to a deps.edn or project.clj or the maven way.

If you take a look a this library which is an "official" library you will find three snippets of code for adding the dependency to your project and some with a very strange syntax.

After doing that, the next time you open your project or REPL clojure will download the dependencies for you.

The neil Way

Recently, doing my Clojure repository searching for studying purposes (or CRSSP for short) I stumbled on this very underrated and not much used in tutorial CLI helper for deps.edn Clojure projects called neil.

neil is:

A CLI to add common aliases and features to deps.edn-based projects.

Created by the same guy who created babashka which is a way to write bash scripts, node scripts, and even apple scripts using Clojure. A very proficient and influential developer in the Clojure community. This is how borkduke's neil helps us:

neil add dep com.stuartsierra/component 

And done. The dependency was added to deps.edn. Automatization wins again!

Neil is the Way!

So neil has a bunch of other features like project scaffolding, building, testing, adding license, etc. I really recommend you take a deep look at the repository and learn all the automatized possibilities that neil adds to your project.

Thanks!

In closing, I hope this introduction to the neil CLI was helpful in simplifying your Clojure dependency workflow. A big thank you to the developers behind neil for creating a tool that streamlines common tasks. Please feel free to reach out if you have any other questions about using neil in your own projects.

About the Author

Hello there! I'm bop, a dedicated software engineer driven by a love for continuous learning and creative exploration. Stay connected with me for updates on my current activities and exciting projects.

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