Annually-Funded Developers' Update: Mar./April 2025

Hello Fellow Clojurists! This is the second report from the 5 developers receiving Annual Funding in 2025.

Dragan Duric: Apple M Engine Neanderthal
Eric Dallo: metrepl, lsp-intellij, repl-intellij. lsp, lsp4clj
Michiel Borkent: clj-kondo, squint, babashka, fs, SCI, and more…
Oleksandr Yakushev: CIDER, Compliment, JDK24
Peter Taoussanis: Telemere, Tufte, Truss

Dragan Duric

2025 Annual Funding Report 2. Published May 5, 2025.

My goal with this funding in 2025 is to support Apple silicon (M cpus) in Neanderthal (and other Uncomplicate libraries where that makes sense and where it’s possible).

In March and April, I implemented the JNI bindings for 5 Apple Accelerate libraries (blas_new, lapack_new, Sparse, BNNS, BNNS Graph, vDSP, vForce and vImage) and implemented almost all functionality of Neaanderthal’s Apple M engine based on Accelerate. It will soon be ready for proper release (currently waiting some bugfixes, polishing, and a javacpp-presets release to be available in Maven Central).

In more detail:

Here’s what I’ve proposed when applying for the CT grant.
I proposed to Implement an Apple M engine for Neanderthal. This involves:

• buying an Apple M2/3 Mac (the cheapest M3 in Serbia is almost 3000 USD (with VAT).
• learning enough macOS tools (Xcode was terrible back in the days) to be able to do anything.
• exploring JavaCPP support for ARM and macOS.
• exploring relevant libraries (OpenBLAS may even work through JavaCPP).
• exploring Apple Accelerate.
• learning enough JavaCPP tooling to be able to see whether it is realistic that I build Accelerate wrapper (and if I can’t, at least to know how much I don’t know).
• I forgot even little C/C++ that I did know back in the day. This may also give me some headaches, as I’ll have to quickly pick up whatever is needed.
• writing articles about relevant topics so Clojurians can pick this functionality as it arrives.

Projects directly involved:
https://github.com/uncomplicate/neanderthal
https://github.com/uncomplicate/deep-diamond
https://github.com/uncomplicate/clojure-cpp

As I implemented and OpenBLAS-based engine in January-February, in March-April I tackled the main objective: Apple Accelerate bindings. As Apple’s documentation is not stellar, and there are multiple tools and languages involved, it was a slow and tedious work consisting of lots of experimentation and discovery. Even boring, I would say. But, slowly and steadily I discovered how relevant JavaCPP generators work, I unearthed Accelerate C++ intricacies, fought with them one by one, and slowly I managed to create the proper Java bindings! Along the way I even contributed some fixes and updates to JavaCPP itself! YAY! This is available as a new project under Uncomplicate umbrella at https://github.com/uncomplicate/apple-presets

Next, I returned to the pleasant part of work - programming in Clojure - and almost completed the dedicated Neanderthal engine that utilizes Apple Accelerate for BLAS, LAPACK, as well as Math functions and random generators on M Macs. This covers the core and linalg namespace, that was already supported by the alternative OpenBLAS engine (implemented in Jan-Feb) AND Math and RNG engines. I didn’t manage to iron out all the bugs so it could be ready for release, but this will certainly be ready in May-June. I also didn’t manage to tackle Sparse matrices, but as I managed to create Accelerate bindings for all types, including Sparse, I expect this to not be a problem and be completed during this funding round.

Looking at the funding proposal, I can say that I’m very satisfied that all the features that I promised to build are progressing even better than expected, so that will leave some time to try to do some of the features that I said I hope to be able to support, namely to explore Deep Diamond Tensor support on Apple M (via BNNS and/or BNNS Graph) and GPU support via Metal.

I even got some ideas for additional projects based on native Apple functionality related to machine learning and audio/video, but lets not getting too much ahead.

All in all, I feel optimistic about how this project progresses!

Eric Dallo

2025 Annual Funding Report 2. Published April 30, 2025.

In these 2 last months I could work on multiple projects and even focus on a new exciting project called metrepl, a nREPL middleware to help extract metrics about your REPL, really helpful when you have multiple coworkers working in multiple projects and you want to collect information about performance, time spent in REPL features and others! Besides that, I worked hard on keep improving the IntelliJ experience using the 2 OSS plugins of LSP + REPL, and of cource improving clojure-lsp the base of all major editors now.

metrepl

- 0.3.1

• Improve export exception handler
• Remove jvm started flaky metric
• Fix event/op-completed metric to measure time correctly
• Add event/test-executed event.
• Add event/test-passed, event/test-errored and event/test-failed events.
• Add session-time-ms to close op.
• Add :project-path to metrics.
• Add compatibility with older Clojure versions

clojure-lsp

2025.03.07-17.42.36 - 2025.04.23-18.16.46

• General
  • Bump clj-kondo to 2025.02.20.
  • Add support for OpenTelemetry(otlp) log, enabled if configured. #1963
  • Bump rewrite-clj to 0bb572a03c0025c01f9c36bfca2815254683fbde. #1984
  • Bump clj-kondo to 2025.02.21-20250314.135629-7.
  • Add support for ignoring tests references for the clojure-lsp/unused-public-var linter. #1878
  • Add :test-locations-regex configuration to allow customizing test file detection for the unused-public-var linter’s :ignore-test-references? and test code lenses. #1878
  • Improve and standardize all logs for better troubleshooting and metrics collection.
  • Fix unused-public-var false positives when :ignore-test-references? true.
  • Bump clj-kondo to 2025.04.07.
• Editor
  • Improve paredit slurp and barf corner cases. #1973 #1976
  • Add Semantic Tokens support for the Clojure Reader Dispatch macro #_ (ignore next form). #1965
  • Fix regression on previous version on snippets completion. #1978
  • Add forward, forward-select, backward and backward-select paredit actions.
  • Show add require code action for invalid syntax codes like my-alias/. #1957
  • Improve startup performance for huge projects avoiding publish empty diagnostics for every file of the project unnecessarily.
  • Improve timbre context log.
  • Fix suggestion for add require code action. #2017
  • Improve find definition so it works on declare forms too. #1986

clojure-lsp-intellij

3.1.1 - 3.4.0

• Remove : lexer check since this is delegated to clojure-lsp/clj-kondo already.
• Fix comment form complain about missing paren.
• Improve server installation fixing concurrency bugs + using lsp4ij install API.
• Bump clj4intellij to 0.7.1
• Support Namespaces on search everywhere (Shift + shift). #64
• Add support for forward, backward, forward-select, backward-select paredit actions. #72
• Fix go to declaration or usages. #70

clojure-repl-intellij

Together with the help of @afucher, we improved so much the IntelliJ REPL experience, fixing multiple issues and adding multiple features, the experience now is pretty close to other REPL experiences in other editors!

2.3.0 - 2.5.2

• Update repl window ns after switching ns.
• Fix exception on settings page.
• Fix special form evaluations. #135
• Add support for JVM args on local REPL configuration. #124
• Send to REPL eval results. #92
• Fix repl input when evaluated the same input of last eval.
• Fix history navigation via shortcut not working after 2.0.0.
• Enhance REPL evaluations. #108
  • Isolate ns from REPL windows and file editors
  • Evaluate ns form from file automatically to avoid namespace-not-found errors.
• Fix REPL window horizontal scrollbar not working.
• Fix REPL window broken after making any change to its layout. #144
• Disable “clear REPL” action when REPL is not connected. #126
• Bump clj4intellij to 0.8.0
• Configure project with IntelliJ integration tests (headless)

lsp4clj

1.12.0 - 1.13.0

• Add textDocument/selectionRange LSP feature coercers.
• Add inlay-hint LSP feature coercers.

clj4intellij

0.7.0 - 0.8.0

• Create def-extension to create plugin.xml extension points easily and more idiomatic.
• Fix clojure-lsp hook
• Drop support of older IntelliJ versions (2021/2022). Now requires minimum IntelliJ 2023.3 (Build 233)
• Bump JAVA min version to 17
• Add support for tests.
  

Michiel Borkent

2025 Annual Funding Report 2. Published May 2, 2025.

In this post I’ll give updates about open source I worked on during March and April 2025.

To see previous OSS updates, go here.

Sponsors

I’d like to thank all the sponsors and contributors that make this work possible. Without you the below projects would not be as mature or wouldn’t exist or be maintained at all! So a sincere thank you to everyone who contributes to the sustainability of these projects.

Current top tier sponsors:

• Clojurists Together
• Roam Research
• Nextjournal
• Nubank

Open the details section for more info about sponsoring.

Blog posts

I blogged about an important improvement in babashka regarding type hints here.

Interviews

Also I did an interview with Jiri from Clojure Corner by Flexiana, viewable here.

Updates

Here are updates about the projects/libraries I’ve worked on in the last two months.

• babashka: native, fast starting Clojure interpreter for scripting.

  • Improve Java reflection based on provided type hints (read blog post here)
  • Add compatibility with the fusebox library
  • Fix virtual ThreadBuilder interop
  • Add java.util.concurrent.ThreadLocalRandom
  • Add java.util.concurrent.locks.ReentrantLock
  • Add classes:
    • java.time.chrono.ChronoLocalDate
    • java.time.temporal.TemporalUnit
    • java.time.chrono.ChronoLocalDateTime
    • java.time.chrono.ChronoZonedDateTime
    • java.time.chrono.Chronology
  • #1806: Add cheshire.factory namespace (@lread)
  • Bump GraalVM to 24
  • Bump SCI to 0.9.45
  • Bump edamame to 1.4.28
  • #1801: Add java.util.regex.PatternSyntaxException
  • Bump core.async to 1.8.735
  • Bump cheshire to 6.0.0
  • Bump babashka.cli to 0.8.65

• clerk: Moldable Live Programming for Clojure

  • Replace tools.analyzer with a more light-weight analyzer which also adds support for Clojure 1.12

• squint: CLJS syntax to JS compiler

  • #653: respect :context expr in compile-string
  • #657: respect :context expr in set! expression
  • #659: fix invalid code produced for REPL mode with respect to return
  • #651 Support :require + :rename + allow renamed value to be used in other :require clause
  • Fix #649: reset ns when compiling file and fix initial global object
  • Fix #647: emit explicit null when written in else branch of if
  • Fix #640: don’t emit anonymous function if it is a statement (@jonasseglare)
  • Fix #643: Support lexicographic compare of arrays (@jonasseglare)
  • Fix #602: support hiccup-style shorthand for id and class attributes in #jsx and #html
  • Fix #635: range fixes
  • Fix #636: add run!
  • defclass: elide constructor when not provided
  • Fix #603: don’t emit multiple returns
  • Drop constructor requirement for defclass

• clj-kondo: static analyzer and linter for Clojure code that sparks joy.
  

  • #2522: support :config-in-ns on :missing-protocol-method
  • #2524: support :redundant-ignore on :missing-protocol-method
  • #1292: NEW linter: :missing-protocol-method. See docs
  • #2512: support vars ending with ., e.g. py. according to clojure analyzer
  • #2516: add new --repro flag to ignore home configuration
  • #2493: reduce image size of native image
  • #2496: Malformed deftype form results in NPE
  • #2499: Fix (alias) bug (@Noahtheduke)
  • #2492: Report unsupported escape characters in strings
  • #2502: add end locations to invalid symbol
  • #2511: fix multiple parse errors caused by incomplete forms
  • document var-usages location info edge cases (@sheluchin)
  • Upgrade to GraalVM 24
  • Bump datalog parser
  • Bump built-in cache

• SCI: Configurable Clojure/Script interpreter suitable for scripting

  • Fix #957: sci.async/eval-string+ should return promise with :val nil for ns form rather than :val <Promise>
  • Fix #959: Java interop improvement: instance method invocation now leverages type hints
  • Fix #942: improve error location of invalid destructuring
  • Add volatile? to core vars
  • Fix #950: interop on local in CLJS
  • Bump edamame to 1.4.28

• quickdoc: Quick and minimal API doc generation for Clojure

  • Fix #32: fix anchor links to take into account var names that differ only by case
  • Revert source link in var title and move back to <sub>
  • Specify clojure 1.11 as the minimal Clojure version in deps.edn
  • Fix macro information
  • Fix #39: fix link when var is named multiple times in docstring
  • Upgrade clj-kondo to 2025.04.07
  • Add explicit org.babashka/cli dependency

• CLI: Turn Clojure functions into CLIs!

  • #119: format-table now formats multiline cells appropriately (@lread)
  • Remove pom.xml and project.clj for cljdoc
  • #116: Un-deprecate :collect option to support custom transformation of arguments to collections (@lread)
  • Support :collect in :spec

• process: Clojure library for shelling out / spawning sub-processes

  • #163, #164: Program resolution strategy for exec and Windows now matches macOS/Linux/PowerShell (@lread)
  • Fix memory leak by executing shutdown hook when process finishes earlier than VM exit (@maxweber)

• html: Html generation library inspired by squint’s html tag

  • Fix #3: allow dynamic attribute value: (html [:a {:a (+ 1 2 3)}])
  • Fix #9: shortcuts for id and classes

• cherry: Experimental ClojureScript to ES6 module compiler

  • Add cljs.pprint/pprint
  • Add add-tap
  • Bump squint compiler common which brings in new #html id and class shortcuts + additional features and optimizations, such as an optimization for aset

• nbb: Scripting in Clojure on Node.js using SCI

  • Add better Deno + jsr: dependency support, stay tuned.

• instaparse-bb: Use instaparse from babashka

  • Several improvements which makes babashka compatible with test.chuck. See this screenshot!

• edamame: Configurable EDN/Clojure parser with location metadata

  • #117: throw on triple colon keyword

• fs - File system utility library for Clojure

  • #141: fs/match doesn’t match when root dir contains glob or regex characters in path
  • #138: Fix fs/update-file to support paths (@rfhayashi)

• sql pods: babashka pods for SQL databases

  • Upgrade to GraalVM 23, fixes encoding issue with Korean characters

Other projects

These are (some of the) other projects I’m involved with but little to no activity happened in the past month.

Oleksandr Yakushev

2025 Annual Funding Report 2. Published May 5, 2025.

Hello friends! Here’s an update on my March-April 2025 Clojurists Together work.

CIDER

• We just published a huge CIDER 1.18 release that I spent two months working on. It is packed with features to the brim! See the full list of changes in the announcement.
• 150 commits and 64 PRs accross 6 repositories.
• Auxiliary releases: cider-nrepl 0.52.1 -> 0.55.7, Orchard 0.30.1 -> 0.34.3.

Compliment

• New release: 0.7.0.
• New feature: priority-based candidate sorting.

Maintenance

• Started testing all of the projects I maintain again JDK24.
• Added support for JDK24 in Virgil (0.4.0)
  

Peter Taoussanis

2025 Annual Funding Report 2. Published April 30, 2025.

A big thanks to Clojurists Together, Nubank, and other sponsors of my open source work! I realise that it’s a tough time for a lot of folks and businesses lately, and that sponsorships aren’t always easy 🙏

- Peter Taoussanis

Hi folks! 👋👋
Hope everyone’s well, and those in Europe enjoying the first glimpses of actual ☀️ in a while :-)

Recent work

Telemere: structured logs and telemetry for Clj/s

Telemere v1 stable is now officially and finally available! 🍾🥳🎉

It was a lot of work to get here, but I’m happy with the results - and I’m very grateful for all the folks that have been patiently testing early releases and giving feedback 🙏

If you haven’t yet had an opportunity to check out Telemere, now’s a pretty good time.

It’s basically a modern rewrite of Timbre that handles both structured and unstructured logging for Clojure and ClojureScript applications. It’s small, fast, and very flexible.

I’ll of course continue to support Timbre, but Telemere offers a lot of advantages, and migration is often pretty straight-forward.

There’s a couple video intros:

• Lightning tour (7 mins)
• Full intro (24 mins)

Telemere also has the most extensive docs I’ve written for a library, including both:

• Lots of beginner-oriented stuff, and
• Advanced info for folks that might like to write custom handlers, transforms, or other tools.

Tufte: performance monitoring for Clj/s

Tufte v3 RC1 is now also available.

Tufte’s been around for ages but recently underwent a major overhaul focused on improving usability, and interop with Telemere.

The two now share a common core for filtering and handling. This means that they get to share relevant concepts, terminology, capabilities, and config APIs.

The shared core also means wider testing, easier ongoing maintenance, and the opportunity for improvements to further cross-pollinate in future.

Performance has also been significantly improved, and the documentation greatly expanded. There’s too much new stuff to mention here, but as usual please see the release notes for details.

Other stuff

Several other releases worth mentioning:

• Truss v2.1.0 - micro toolkit for Clojure/Script errors
• http-kit v2.9.0-beta1 - high performance HTTP client+server for Clojure
• Timbre v6.7.0 - pure Clojure/Script logging library
• Nippy v3.5.0 - fast serialization for Clojure

I’ll note that Telemere, Tufte, and Truss are now intended to form a sort of suite of complementary observability tools for modern Clojure and ClojureScript systems:

• Telemere for logging, tracing, and general telemetry
• Tufte for performance monitoring
• Truss for assertions and error handling

Together the 3x offer what I hope is quite a pleasant (and unique) observability story for Clojure/Script developers.

Upcoming work

Next couple months I expect to focus on:

• Getting Tempel v1 stable out (data security framework for Clojure)
• Significant work on Sente (realtime web comms for Clojure/Script)

After that, still need to decide. Might be additional stuff for Telemere, or gearing up for the first public release of Carmine v4 (Redis client + message queue for Clojure).

Cheers everyone! :-)