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https://github.com/clojure-emacs/orchard

A fertile ground for Clojure tooling
https://github.com/clojure-emacs/orchard

cider clojure orchard tooling

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A fertile ground for Clojure tooling

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# Orchard



A Clojure library designed to provide common functionality for Clojure

development tools (e.g. Clojure editor plugins and IDEs).



Right now `orchard` provides functionality like:



* enhanced apropos

* classpath utils (alternative for `java.classpath`)

* value [inspector](https://github.com/clojure-emacs/orchard/blob/master/doc/inspector.org)

* Java class handling utilities

* Utilities for dealing with metadata

* Namespace utilities

* Fetching ClojureDocs documentation

* Finding function dependencies (other functions invoked by a function) and usages



## Why?



Much of the tooling code required to build Clojure editors and smart REPLs

is tool-agnostic and *should* be reused between tools, instead of copied

and altered in each and every tool.



Having a common tooling foundation typically means:



* Better foundation (e.g. more functionality, good documentation, etc) with more contributors

* Less work for tool authors as they don't have to reinvent the wheel for every tool

* Happier end users



## Design



Orchard is meant to be used to build programmer tooling relying on inspecting the state of a running REPL.

REPL-powered tooling has been a core Lisp idea for many years and there are many Clojure libraries

in that space (e.g. `compliment`, `tools.trace`, `sayid`, etc).



One thing to keep in mind is that Orchard relies (mostly) on runtime information, not the source code itself.

In simple terms - only code that's loaded (evaluated) will be taken under consideration. That's pretty different

from the static analysis approach taken by tools for most programming languages where it's not possible to

easily inspect the state of running program.



Some other design goals are listed bellow.



### No Runtime Dependencies



Orchard is meant to run alongside your application and we can't have a

dev tools library interfere with your app right? Dependency collisions are nasty problems which are best solved

by making sure there can't be any shared libraries to cause the conflict.



### API Optimized for Editors



Code editors can't know what symbols resolve to without consulting a REPL that's why they would typically

send a combination of a symbol name and some ns (e.g. the current namespace), so they can be resolved to

some var on which an operation would be invoked.



That's why the majority of the functions in Orchard take a combination of a ns and a symbol instead of a var.

Probably down the road we'll provide var-friendly versions of most functions as well.



### REPL Agnostic



No matter whether you're using nREPL, a socket REPL, or prepl, Orchard has your back. nREPL clients might

opt to wrap some of the Orchard functionality in middleware for convenience (as `cider-nrepl` does), but they

can just eval away if they please.



## API Documentation



Documentation for the master branch as well as tagged releases are available

[here](https://cljdoc.org/d/cider/orchard).



## Usage



**orchard requires Clojure 1.10+ and Java 8+.**



> [!NOTE]

>

> Java 8 is soft-deprecated in Orchard since version 0.29. Core Orchard funcitonality continues to work on JDK 8, but these following features don't:

> - Java sources parsing



Just add `orchard` as a dependency and start hacking.



```clojure

[cider/orchard "0.30.0"]

```



Consult the [API documentation](https://cljdoc.org/d/cider/orchard/CURRENT) to get a better idea about the

functionality that's provided.



## Dealing with Java sources



Orchard interacts with Java source files (`.java` files) in several ways:



- Locates the Java source files to enable the "jump to definition" functionality.

  - Also enables "jump to file:line" from the printed stacktrace (a CIDER feature).

- Parses Java sources to extract additional information about Java interop

  targets (constructors, methods).

  - Allows jumping directly to method definition in the Java source file.

  - Extends the documentation for interop targets with Javadoc comments, exact

    method argument names.



Currently, Orchard is able to find Java source files in the following places:



- On the classpath.

- In the `src.zip` archive that comes together with most JDK distributions.

- For clases that come from Maven-downloaded dependencies — in the special

  `-sources.jar` artifact that resides next to the main artifact in the `~/.m2`

  directory. The sources artifact has to be downloaded ahead of time.



Orchard provides

`orchard.java.source-files/download-sources-jar-for-coordinates` function to

download the sources by invoking a subprocess with one of the supported build

tools (Clojure CLI or Leiningen). You can call this function at any point of

time on your own. Alternatively, you can bind the dynamic variable

`orchard.java.source-files/*download-sources-jar-fn*` to a function which

accepts a Class object, and Orchard will call this function automatically when

it fails to locate a Java source file for the class. Usage example:



```clj

(binding [src-files/*download-sources-jar-fn*

          #(src-files/download-sources-jar-for-coordinates

            (src-files/infer-maven-coordinates-for-class %))]

  (class->source-file-url ))

```



If the source file can be located, this is usually enough for basic "jump to

source" functionality. For a more precise "jump to definition" and for

Javadoc-based documentation, Orcard will attempt to parse the source file.



## Development



Having JDK sources archive (`$JAVA_HOME/lib/src.zip`) is important for

development of Java-related features in Orchard. Certain features parse those

Java sources as a source of information. The archive doesn't need to be on the

classpath, it just need to exist in the distribution.



You can install Orchard locally like this:



```

PROJECT_VERSION=99.99 make install

```



For releasing to [Clojars](https://clojars.org/):



```

git tag -a vX.Y.Z -m "Release X.Y.Z"

git push --tags

git push

```



### Tests and formatting



To run the CI tasks locally use:



``` shell

make test cljfmt kondo eastwood

```



## Caveats and Known Issues



### `xref/fn-deps` and `xref/fn-refs` limitations



These functions use a Clojure compiler implementation detail to find references to other function var dependencies.



You can find a more in-depth explanation in this [post](https://lukas-domagala.de/blog/clojure-analysis-and-introspection.html).



The important implications from this are:



* very fast

* functions marked with meta `:inline` will not be found (`inc`, `+`, ...)

* redefining function vars that include lambdas will still return the dependencies of the old plus the new ones

([explanation](https://lukas-domagala.de/blog/clojure-compiler-class-cache.html))

* does not work on AoT compiled functions



### Java 8 support



As noted earlier Java 8 is soft-deprecated in Orchard since version 0.29. Core Orchard funcitonality continues to work on JDK 8, but the following features don't:



- Java sources parsing



We are aware that some people are stuck using Java 8 and we'll keep supporting for as long as we can, but it's no longer a priority for us that every feature works with Java 8.



## History



Originally [SLIME][] was the most

popular way to program in Clojure with Emacs and a lot of useful

functionality was created for it to support things like code

completion, value inspection, finding references, apropos and so

on. This functionality was implemented as a swank adapter written in

Clojure and lived in the

[swank-clojure][] project.



Subsequently [CIDER][] and

[cider-nrepl][] replaced

SLIME and swank, and much code was moved from `swank-clojure` to

`cider-nrepl` and continued to evolve there.



You can watch the presentation [The Evolution of the Emacs tooling for

  Clojure](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4X-1fJm25Ww&list=PLZdCLR02grLoc322bYirANEso3mmzvCiI&index=6)

  to learn more about all of this.



This project is an effort to prevent repeating the mistakes of the

past - `cider-nrepl` was split into two libraries, so that non-nREPL

clients can make of use of the general functionality contained in

`cider-nrepl` (e.g. things like `apropos`, `inspect`, etc).



## License



Copyright © 2018-2025 Bozhidar Batsov & contributors



Distributed under the Eclipse Public License either version 1.0 or (at

your option) any later version.



[SLIME]: https://github.com/slime/slime

[swank-clojure]: https://github.com/technomancy/swank-clojure

[CIDER]: https://github.com/clojure-emacs/cider

[cider-nrepl]:https://github.com/clojure-emacs/cider-nrepl