Why can't anonymous functions access their metadata unless they were created with some

Question

These two expressions have a different result:

((with-meta
   ^:any (fn self []
           (meta self))
   {:foo :bar}))

((with-meta
   (fn self []
           (meta self))
   {:foo :bar}))

The former returns {:foo :bar} the latter returns nil.

I'm guessing this is a bug, perhaps an unexpected consequence of an optimization?

(Filed: https://clojure.atlassian.net/browse/CLJ-2539)

Answer 1

I filed this as a ticket and added the jira to the description above.