How to install the clojure development environment

by @ardumont on 22 Dec 2012

In this article, we will see how to rapidly install the clojure tools in a debian-like distribution (ubuntu 11.10 for example).

Pre-requisites

emacs

See this previous post for installing it

Installation

clojure

install

sudo aptitude install clojure

Note apt-get if you do not have aptitude installed.

check

Type clojure in a shell

clojure
user=>

You will have a repl in which you could ask some functions to eval.

user=> (+ 1 1)
2

leiningen 1

install

The easy way

sudo aptitude install leiningen

If you do not have leiningen in the packages, then you must pass by the not so hard way.

The not so hard way

Download the script

wget https://raw.github.com/technomancy/leiningen/stable/bin/lein

Place it on your $PATH
I also like to use ~/bin.
```
export PATH=~/bin/:$PATH
```
I usually add this in the ~/.bashrc file.
Make it executable
```
chmod 755 ~/bin/lein
```

Ask the version

This will download all it needs.

lein version

and finally gives you an output similar to this:

tony@dagobah(0.11,) 09:56:26 ~/org (master) $ lein version
Leiningen 1.7.1 on Java 1.6.0_26 Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM

check

tony@dagobah(0.16,) 13:00:07 ~ $ lein repl
REPL started; server listening on localhost port 14778
user=>

For example:

user=> (+ 1 1)
2

lein-midje

install

This is a leiningen plugin to launch unit tests for the unit test framework midje.

lein plugin install lein-midje 1.0.9

Note The version [lein-midje "2.0.0-SNAPSHOT"] is leiningen 2 compatible so do not use this one.

check

tony@dagobah(0.09,) 13:05:45 ~ $ lein midje --version
Couldn't find project.clj, which is needed for midje

jdk installed (either sun or openjdk)

install

openjdk

sudo aptitude install openjdk

sun jdk on ubuntu 11.04

https://github.com/ardumont/sh/blob/master/deploy-java-sun-11.04.sh

sun jdk on ubuntu 11.10

https://github.com/ardumont/sh/blob/master/deploy-java-sun-11.10.sh

check

tony@dagobah(0.32,) 13:04:16 ~ $ java -version
java version "1.6.0_26"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_26-b03)
Java HotSpot(TM) Server VM (build 20.1-b02, mixed mode)

git (optional)

install

sudo aptitude install git

check

tony@dagobah(0.10,) 13:05:41 (129) ~ $ git version
git version 1.7.5.4

Conclusion

We have focused on the needed steps to install the clojure environment. You now have all the tools to develop with clojure.

In a near future, i intend to make some other blog posts to focus on:

how to bootstrap a new clojure project using leiningen
how to solve a simple problem in clojure and show how these tools work together
continued integration with travis-ci
heroku for the deploying part
marginalia for the documentation generation and the github integration