Just saw this thread. I went through something similar recently: I'm a long-time emacs user just getting into Clojure, so naturally I set it up with emacs. I set it up with Leiningen (a 2.0.0 preview version), and while I found it relatively painless, I did have a few problems mostly with Emacs. I think the stuff about getting sidetracked with emacs configuration/package-management is pretty true; it's very easy to get lost in the emacs wilderness, which is much "hoarier" than Clojure.
I also think that, at present, while coming in through Leiningen is definitely the most painless way to do things (I'm really loving it actually, as a Ruby dev it kind of seems like rvm + bundler + rake all wrapped up in one handy package), trying to navigate whether to use 1.x or 2.x preview is a bit confusing--and the variety of docs available for setting things up is confusing. Similarly, it's easy to get lost (as a beginner) between namespace issues with packages and how to set things up properly with Leiningen. It'd be good to have some documentation on that. Getting testing up and running with midje was also a bit of a challenge--I still haven't figured out how to get automated testing going smoothly in emacs with the nice midje stuff Mr. Marick has added, but I'll go back and tackle that some day. At the least, I finally got testing working via lein. And at the danger of digressing wildly, as a beginner namespace and file loading stuff is really hard to wrap my head around, but that could be my own particular weakness. All of that said, maybe I'll take a look at the docs and see if I can add anything constructive, since I've set it up now a few times on Macs. In any case, I'm really loving playing with Clojure. I hope to start sneaking it into some real applications at work this year, and infect some other devs with the Clojure bug... Cheers, Dave D. 2012/6/14 Sean Corfield <seancorfi...@gmail.com>: > On Wed, Jun 13, 2012 at 6:27 PM, fenton <fenton.trav...@gmail.com> wrote: >> I totally understand the value of having a single source of truth (DRY >> principle). My main problem was that to get from 0-60 for doing clojure >> development is quite challenging. > > Which is why the official documentations needs contributions from > folks who've gone thru this process recently... It's a bit of a > chicken and egg situation: if the current docs aren't good enough, > folks go off into the Internet wilderness and try to piece together > the experience themselves. And then what they go thru often doesn't > even come close to what _should_ be in the official documentation as > the simplest solution. And of course we each typically only set up one > machine (our own) so we don't have much incentive to repeat the > process over and over to refine it for the official documentation. I > sympathize with the process you've gone thru. I went thru it too. I > created this document for Emacs + Leiningen on Windows - > http://corfield.org/articles/emacs_win.html - and I have not > publicized it because it's already out of date. And that was the third > time I'd been thru the process: first on Mac, then on Ubuntu, then > Windows XP. > >> I had a major piss around trying to get the marmelade repo working. >> Finally, someone suggested emacs 24, which itself is fairly hard to find >> without a link to alpa. > > The kind folks on #clojure on IRC ensured I started with a prerelease > of Emacs 24 which helped. Emacs 24 is now the current stable version, > which makes discovery much easier. > >> So say I start at: http://marmalade-repo.org/, well then it says: "Install >> package.el", it doesn't say how to install package.el, so now I gotta google > > Yup, that was my initial complaint. > >> I still don't know if I >> need both clojure and clojure-contrib in my project.clj files or not. They >> are different versions, should they be in sync? > > Monolithic Clojure Contrib was deprecated when Clojure 1.3 appeared > and is no longer maintained. See > http://dev.clojure.org/display/design/Where+Did+Clojure.Contrib+Go > >> I did find myself getting a bit angry writing this, because I'd really like >> to see clojure displace java, but I think its fair to say that there is a >> gap in helping people who have little >> emacs/clojure/leiningen/swank/slime/cdt/lisp exposure getting on board. > > Yup. This complaint is very valid and comes up fairly regularly, and > each time the official documentation gets a bit better (but it still > has a long way to go). > >> I think github is a better place to document this stuff than confluence. > > The Clojure project uses JIRA / Confluence for issue tracking and > documentation - and Github for code. Pull requests are not allowed. > See http://clojure.org/contributing and http://clojure.org/patches - > also see > http://dev.clojure.org/display/doc/Guidelines+for+Clojure+Contrib+committers > for the mechanics of getting onboard as a contributor and getting your > accounts / permissions set up. > > We definitely need improvements in the official getting started > documentation. Starting here - > http://dev.clojure.org/display/doc/Getting+Started - any specific > problems / improvements that folks identify will generally get fixed > fairly quickly if they're brought up on this list. There are a couple > of list members who are pretty motivated around improving the "newbie > experience"... > -- > Sean A Corfield -- (904) 302-SEAN > An Architect's View -- http://corfield.org/ > World Singles, LLC. -- http://worldsingles.com/ > > "Perfection is the enemy of the good." > -- Gustave Flaubert, French realist novelist (1821-1880) > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google > Groups "Clojure" group. > To post to this group, send email to clojure@googlegroups.com > Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with your > first post. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. 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