Connect to a Clojure REPL

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 terminal

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

practicalli/clojure-deps-edn defines the :middleware/clj alias that includes several libraries required for the nREPL connection between CIDER and the REPL.

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

clojure -M:middleware/cider-clj

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

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

clojure -M:repl/rebel-nrepl

Connect to REPL from CIDER

SPC 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

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

Confirm the port number the nREPL server is listening too

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

Common REPL start / restart keybindings