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Connect to a Clojure REPLλ︎

Starting a REPL in a terminal is the most resilient way of running a REPL, as if the editor has to be restarted or crashes, the REPL is not affected.

practicalli/clojure-deps-edn provides many aliases to configure a REPL to work with other community tools (e.g. data ). These aliases are easier to manage when running a REPL outside of an editor which automatically injects its own configuration.

Start a REPL in the terminalλ︎

The clojure command and clj wrapper both start a REPL with a basic terminal interface, clj also provides command history.

:repl/headless alias from practicalli/clojure-deps-edn provides a rich terminal UI and libraries required for editors to connect via nREPL (network REPL protocol).

Open a terminal in the root directory of a Clojure project and run a non-interactive REPL process

clojure -M:repl/headless

The REPL will start along with an nREPL server, showing the connection details.

Clojure Terminal REPL UI with Rebel readline

An .nrepl-port file is created in the root of the Clojure project, containing the port number the nREPL server is listening upon.

Headless terminal REPL

:repl/headless alias from practicalli/clojure-deps-edn includes libraries required for the nREPL connection between CIDER and the REPL. A headless session is useful for remote REPL processes on other servers or when interaction is only done via the editor. 

clojure -M:repl/rebel-nrepl

Connect to REPL from CIDERλ︎

Space f f to open a file from the Clojure project on the remote server.

ssh remote

, ' to call sesman-start and choose cider-connect-clj which should find the right host and port

Clojure Terminal REPL UI with Rebel readline

Confirm the host name, typically localhost when running the REPL locally

Clojure Terminal REPL UI with Rebel readline

Confirm the port number the nREPL server is listening too

Clojure Terminal REPL UI with Rebel readline

Spacemacs is now connected to the REPL and Clojure code can be evaluated in the source code buffers.

Common REPL start / restart keybindingsλ︎

Key bindings Command
, ' or , m s start a REPL, selecting the type (sesman-start)
, m b browse active REPL's (sesman-browse)
, m i show information about the current REPL (sesman-info)
, m q r restart the REPL, quit and jack-in. (sesman-restart)
, m q q quit the REPL (sesman-quit)
, e n refresh stale code and load new code into the REPL (cider-ns-refresh)
, e N force reload the current namespaces in the REPL (cider-ns-reload)