Clojure Q&A - Recent questions and answers in tools.build

Answered: tools.build compile-clj capture out/err

Mon, 28 Jul 2025 20:00:23 +0000

Logged as https://clojure.atlassian.net/browse/TBUILD-46

Answered: tools.build fails with http_proxy/https_proxy set

Wed, 02 Jul 2025 12:48:08 +0000

A quote from Alex Miller that was used at least once to explain why the support isn't there:

We’re going through the Maven apis for that stuff and that’s just not how it works
[...]
tools.deps supports that via the mirror/proxy settings in settings.xml

So your script could be creating settings.xml with the right content dictated by http_proxy.

Answered: Please consider making tools.build pom.properties reproducible (e.g. the "Generated by" date)

Sun, 16 Feb 2025 23:04:32 +0000

If you want to provide a patch, I'd be happy to merge it.

I've created an issue here: https://clojure.atlassian.net/browse/TBUILD-44

You've already signed the contributor agreement and I've sent you an invite to the jira system via that email.

Answered: How to ignore :src-pom default for clojure.tools.build.api/write-pom if ./pom.xml exists?

Wed, 22 May 2024 19:31:36 +0000

Logged as https://clojure.atlassian.net/browse/TBUILD-41

Warn about user.clj during build compilation

Wed, 28 Feb 2024 13:20:46 +0000

We’ve had a few cases where people encountered issues due to the existence of user.clj during uberjar building with tools.build.

Because user loads early, anything it loads is not (typically) reloaded during compilation, which can lead to some namespaces not being compiled.

Should maybe warn if user is on classpath or even actively recompile with something like

(binding [*compile-files* true] (require 'user :reload-all))

switch tools.build to pull from jars rather than exploding onto disk

Tue, 29 Aug 2023 20:49:38 +0000

Following on from https://ask.clojure.org/index.php/10854/getting-an-error-with-tools-build-uberjar?show=10854#q10854

Jars are case-sensitive. This means that an uberjar can have a file named license and LICENSE/epl.txt simultaneously inside them. But if you explode these to disk when building an uberjar in a file system that is case-sensitive (in particular, OSX), you can an error along the lines of

Execution error (ExceptionInfo) at clojure.tools.build.tasks.uber/explode1 (uber.clj:166).
Cannot write META-INF/license/LICENSE.aix-netbsd.txt from io.grpc/grpc-netty-shaded as parent dir is a file from another lib. One of them must be excluded.

The solution to this is to track down the conflicting files and add them to exclusions. But often this can be tedious if the single file you want ot exclude license exists and the error message is about one of several files that conflicts LICENSE/epl.txt.

The error is annoying also because these files can sit together just fine in an uberjar, but not in their temporary location on disk. It would be nice if the uberjar could just pull files from each jar rather than copy them onto disk in an intermediate step.

Answered: Can 'write-pom' in tools.build support providing additional dependencies in the pom.xml with scope 'provided'?

Wed, 29 Mar 2023 17:26:25 +0000

Logged as https://clojure.atlassian.net/browse/TBUILD-38

Answered: tools.build.api/uber uses EDN for data_readers.cljc -- it should support reader conditionals

Wed, 08 Mar 2023 07:45:48 +0000

Thought this had been fixed https://clojure.atlassian.net/plugins/servlet/mobile?originPath=/browse/TBUILD-32#issue/TBUILD-32

Answered: Will tools.build be released as a jar?

Wed, 05 Oct 2022 18:56:32 +0000

In addition to Alex's use case of building on top of tools.build, there are other reasons a .jar can be useful.

Exact reproducibility is another reason to consider this. If someone wants to build a product used in avionics in the US, they'll need to be compliant with the FAA's DO-178C... I'm not a lawyer, but my understanding is one requirement is the ability to produce binary-exact duplicates of software deployed to a device for the lifetime of the device, that can be several years after they're approved. I don't do this kind of work myself, but I do things that support such folks. Minor changes to tools like clojure or tools.build can have effects on what exact code is produced/executed, how many instructions are performed, how much memory is allocated, etc. In situations like this, even the most minor backwards-compatible changes can't be tolerated. Other fields like robotics or satellites can have similar reproducibility requirements, and I suspect the US is not the only country with this kind of regulation.

A maven coordinate is a more-immutable thing, and has a better track record over the time to get you exactly-the-same artifacts.

Exact git commits are reliable (and probably a best option for most projects), but git histories can be revised or deleted... Git "releases" are even more mutable. They can be moved around (e.g. github to gitlab) and also tags can be moved. These are scarier ideas if you're trying to think 5 or 10 years in the future, where project maintainers may have changed a time or two.

Answered: Ability to customise java-cmd in tools.build

Tue, 06 Sep 2022 14:47:32 +0000

Logged as https://clojure.atlassian.net/browse/TBUILD-34

Answered: Exception in EdnReader$DispatchReader

Mon, 27 Jun 2022 14:00:22 +0000

This is logged as https://clojure.atlassian.net/browse/TBUILD-32

Answered: relative directories in classpath-roots

Mon, 20 Jun 2022 01:09:32 +0000

You should be binding *project-root so that relative paths are correctly resolved for both relative paths in the project and for any transitive local deps. The project-root* is there for this purpose. I think it's better not to be putting the basis in a var but instead to bind outside any calls to the build tasks (like create-basis and compile-clj).

Answered: Files in deps :local/root :git/url will directly copy into uberjar without go through conflict-handlers

Fri, 22 Apr 2022 16:05:51 +0000

In particular, it would be helpful if the same :conflict-handlers functionality were provided in clojure.tools.build.api/copy-dir

Answered: Is it possible to set a var during compilation in tools.build?

Mon, 28 Feb 2022 21:10:24 +0000

Right, tools.build forks a new process to do the compilation and creates the compilation code, so there currently is no way to do this. But, might be something worth exploring and I made a ticket at https://clojure.atlassian.net/browse/TBUILD-28 (I would particularly interesting in finding a broader set of use cases before working on it though).

I think my best suggestion for a workaround is to not intertwine your tests with your code so you don't need to do this.

Answered: clojure.tools.build.api/process + ignore hangs when process has large output

Tue, 25 Jan 2022 14:44:37 +0000

This is logged as https://clojure.atlassian.net/browse/TBUILD-1, haven't had a chance to think about it yet.

Answered: tools.build copy-dir with replace loses file permissions

Sun, 12 Dec 2021 18:07:24 +0000

Logged as https://clojure.atlassian.net/browse/TBUILD-24

Answered: Allow specifying the output pom path

Wed, 08 Dec 2021 03:33:55 +0000

Logged as https://clojure.atlassian.net/browse/TBUILD-23

Answered: tools.build/jar doesn't support "sections" in manifest

Mon, 06 Dec 2021 02:29:06 +0000

Logged as https://clojure.atlassian.net/browse/TBUILD-22

Answered: Is it possible to build an uberwar using deps.edn using tools.build or other tool?

Thu, 02 Dec 2021 17:35:43 +0000

It would be useful to know what you need to put in the war. I assume dependency jars. Compiled app classes? web.xml? html/jsp? custom manifest attrs?

I'm not a guru in this area so would appreciate anything you can add there.

Answered: tools.build uber's default conflict handlers don't append to META-INF/services properly

Fri, 26 Nov 2021 18:04:13 +0000

Thanks, fixed in v0.6.8 d79ae84

Answered: tools.build uber task fails when the dependency tree contains a dep which has no jar

Tue, 12 Oct 2021 14:04:08 +0000

Will log when I determine whether this should be a tools.deps or tools.build case.

Answered: tools.build.api/copy-dir corrupts binary files if :replace is used

Sun, 10 Oct 2021 21:38:02 +0000

It's not possible to know whether files are encoded character streams or not, so :replace implicitly assumes that you are copying text files. One existing solution is to use :include to specify only files of a certain type, ie "**.clj".

The Maven resource filter plugin has a binary filtering exclusion on file extension, that might also be a way we could go.

Answered: Add git-hash function

Mon, 27 Sep 2021 20:34:38 +0000

Logged as https://clojure.atlassian.net/browse/TBUILD-19

Answered: tools.build's compile-clj does not allow setting jvm options

Wed, 22 Sep 2021 14:25:12 +0000

Logged as https://clojure.atlassian.net/browse/TBUILD-18, can definitely be added.

Answered: Add git-branch function

Mon, 20 Sep 2021 23:20:19 +0000

Logged as https://clojure.atlassian.net/browse/TBUILD-17

Answered: Should tools.build functions respect with-dir (from tools.deps.alpha)?

Wed, 08 Sep 2021 22:21:15 +0000

tools.build sits on top of tools.deps.alpha. If you're using tools.build, you should set its directory context via https://clojure.github.io/tools.build/clojure.tools.build.api.html#var-set-project-root.21.

Why would you use the underlying lib's dir control in this context? What's the actual use case for that?

Answered: How to control the transient deps that get compiled/assembled into an uberjar?

Thu, 05 Aug 2021 17:38:23 +0000

Using multiple calls to create-basis is exactly right - one for compile and one for uberjar.

Answered: getting an error with tools.build uberjar

Wed, 28 Jul 2021 21:20:23 +0000

Created ticket https://clojure.atlassian.net/browse/TBUILD-11

Answered: tools.build create-basis cannot use alias that includes tools.deps.alpha

Wed, 28 Jul 2021 19:26:21 +0000

Sorry, that resource was a temporary hack that was supposed to be removed and I've now deleted it for the next release of tools.build.

Answered: Add ability to customize JAR manifest created by clojure.tools.build.api/uber

Tue, 20 Jul 2021 18:31:50 +0000

Added custom manifest attribute support (including overrides for the automatic stuff) in jar and uber tasks in tools.build v0.1.4.

(uber {...
       :manifest {"Liquibase-Package" "whatever"
                  "Multi-Release" false}})

Answered: What does "Manifest type :jar not loaded when finding deps ..." mean?

Sun, 18 Jul 2021 12:06:36 +0000

This is a bug in the latest prerelease and I have fixed it for the next release.

Answered: Exclude existing META-INF/MANIFEST.MF when invoking clojure.tools.build.api/uber

Tue, 13 Jul 2021 23:38:42 +0000

depstar has drop-in replacements for tools.build's jar and uber functions that handle merging of LICENSE files, a bunch more exclusions, merging log4j2 plugin caches, etc. See https://github.com/seancorfield/depstar/blob/develop/src/hf/depstar/api.clj

Right now you'd have to depend on HEAD via :git/url as I'm reworking all the documentation before I cut the next release, but I'd be interested in feedback if you're willing to try it out.

See the example https://github.com/seancorfield/depstar/blob/develop/build.clj which is the tools.build examples with depstar's versions of jar and uber swapped in.