deps-library

To publish a small Clojure library to Clojars should be a simple thing.

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As a library author, my needs are simple:

1. Bump the version when ready for a release
2. Ship the code to Clojars

With deps-library this is possible using just one small config file. From that we create a pom.xml (using garamond) and thin jar (using depstar), and deploy to clojars (using deps-deploy).

This library is deployed using itself.

Usage

Create a release.edn file in your project root, eg:

{:group-id "applied-science"
 :artifact-id "deps-library"
 :scm-url "https://github.com/applied-science/deps-library"}

Add a :release alias to your deps.edn as follows:

:aliases
 {:release
  {:extra-deps {applied-science/deps-library {:mvn/version "VERSION"}}
   :main-opts ["-m" "applied-science.deps-library"]}}

Make sure CLOJARS_USERNAME and CLOJARS_PASSWORD environment variables are set (unless you are passing in --clojars-username and --clojars-password directly). For example, add the following to your ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc or equivalent:

export CLOJARS_USERNAME="XYZ"
export CLOJARS_PASSWORD="XYZ"

Create an initial version tag (if you haven't already)

git tag v0.1.0

Release a new version (tag + pom + jar + deploy):

clj -A:release --patch # patch, minor, or major

That's it.

To release the current version (pom + jar + deploy):

clj -A:release

To just tag a new version:

clj -A:release tag --patch # patch, minor, or major

Rationale

tools.deps brought "git deps" to Clojure, making it easy to consume small libraries without any extra effort. However, for production code we often want to depend only on pinned versions that are stored on reliable, public, immutable repositories like Clojars rather than rely on GitHub repositories, which are more easily moved/deleted.

There are four distinct steps in the release process (tag, pom, jar, deploy). In isolation, each step is already adequately covered by a number of different tools. However, tying them all together is enough of a pain (~one page of code, understanding & configuring each tool) that it discourages versioned releases of small libraries. deps-library should make the process relatively painless.

Versioning

By default (via garamond), versions are managed via git tags and are not stored in source code. This means we can release new versions without making any extra commits to update version numbers. Versions created this way can be easily browsed on GitHub (be sure to push with --follow-tags) and major CI services are easily configured to run workflows triggered by tagged commits.

Alternatively, you can pass a --version argument at the command line, or add a :version to your release.edn file (in which case you must handle incrementing the version yourself).

CLI

Commands

eg. clj -A:release <command> <...options>

Core flow:

• default (no command) runs tag + pom + jar + deploy
• tag - creates git tag. if an increment is specified, increments the version first.
• pom - creates pom.xml file
• jar - creates thin jar
• deploy - deploys to clojars

Other commands:

• install - install version to local maven repo (runs tag + pom + jar)
• version - prints version according to given options/environment

Options

The release.edn file itself is optional - all config can be also be passed in via the command line:

  -v, --version VERSION                                          Specify a fixed version
  -i, --incr INCREMENT                                           Increment the current version
      --skip-tag                                                 Do not create a git tag for this version
      --prefix PREFIX                      v                     Version prefix for git tag
      --patch                                                    Increment patch version
      --minor                                                    Increment minor version
      --major                                                    Increment major version
      --config CONFIG                      release.edn           Path to EDN options file
      --group-id GROUP-ID
      --artifact-id ARTIFACT-ID
      --scm-url SCM-URL                                          The source control management URL (eg. github url)
      --clojars-username CLOJARS-USERNAME  environment variable  Your Clojars username
      --clojars-password CLOJARS-PASSWORD  environment variable  Your Clojars password
      --dry-run                                                  Print expected actions, avoiding any side effects
  -h, --help                                                     Print CLI options

All command-line args are also valid keys for inclusion in release.edn (except --config for obvious reasons).