ClojureScript 1.9.456, Externs Inference and Comprehensive JavaScript Modules | Hacker News Reader

ClojureScript 1.9.456, Externs Inference and Comprehensive JavaScript Modules

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166 pointstosh16 comments

I've been using the externs inference feature for a little while, and it works great. Writing externs was the last truly ugly and error-prone part of ClojureScript development. For my game library [1], I can finally use advanced compilation because of this feature. The resulting games are much smaller and get better frame rates now.

[1] https://github.com/oakes/play-cljs

Glad it's working out!

ELI5: My understanding is that this version of clojurescript makes it feasible to import arbitrary javascript libraries into a clojurescript project (including npm package support) and then use pretty effective "dead code elimination" over the entire code (js libraries + clojurescript) to output a very lean production js file.

"React + ReactDOM production scripts are 53K.

ClojureScript (via Closure) can advance compile them to 32K

dead code elimination works"

https://twitter.com/swannodette/status/825384686629355520

This only worked because he wrote a program which didn't need every feature of react's library. YMMV.

Most programs you write use only a segment of the libraries you dep. Closure DCE is really, really good when it has type knowledge. Kills branches, inlines code, etc. It blows anything else in the javascript ecosystem out of the water in that regard (which is important if you're using Closure libraries, because the Closure libraries are massive without DCE).

That said, these days I wouldn't use Closure raw. The tooling is just awful, years out of date. ClojureScript doesn't have that issue though. It gets all the benefits without the crappy tooling.

This is huge. ClojureScript's biggest weakness has always been its inability to just use standard JS stuff the way Clojure could use standard Java stuff. Sounds like they've finally solved it (yes, alpha-quality, but still).

Have to say, JavaScript itself also can't "just use" all the JS stuff.

Happy to answer any questions people might have about this release.

Just wanted to say, you and the team are an inspiration. The CLJS community's work goes a long way toward making web applications - dare I say it - reliable - and fun to code too.

Congrats on this great release. We're all looking forward to what comes next!

Great news, just yesterday I was dusting off my old Cljs project and now this happened.

I was reading the docs on externs (how to describe your JS code - like a 3rd party library - Closure compliant for its API surface). Could it be possible to make Closure's advanced compilation work without name mangling and thus skip the need for externs? Or is there something else going that Closure requires?

Having read about running Babel in Cljs project on Clojurescript site, I'm now contemplating using TypeScript with my Cljs project. There was just now an article on HN about using Angular with Closure, and someone pointed out a library that can convert TypeScript to Closure annotations. It feels like having the best of both worlds: bearable JS when you have to use it and powerful Clojure to rely on. This method would probably work by having TS compiler and Tsickle produce JS + annotations and importing that through CommonJS module support into Cljs. I'll have to make a test for it.

Is this the document you were reading? https://clojurescript.org/guides/javascript-modules

This is the "new stuff"... if you were reading any other document you were probably reading about a far more painful process.

Yes, that was one, but this too: https://clojurescript.org/guides/externs

The previous way was painful. The one before that few years back was also very hard to get correct...

I just upgraded the the latest ClojureScript two days ago - big thanks to swannodette and all the ClojureScript contributors!

It's really a killer feature that allows generating externs almost pain-free! I'm making the jump to advance compile my React Native ClojureScript code because of that. :)

Is there a good way to integrate ClojureScript into an existing JavaScript project yet (not vice-versa)?

All I want is a ClojureScript Webpack loader.

For us migration to cc is not easy. We use css and image loaders with webpack. Cc has a weird way of doing that.

Great news!

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