Refactor nREPL

nREPL middleware to support refactorings in an editor agnostic way.

The role of this nREPL middleware is to provide refactoring support for clients such as clj-refactor.el.

Usage

With CIDER and clj-refactor

If you're using CIDER and clj-refactor you don't have to do anything except call cider-jack-in. The dependencies are injected automagically.

Be aware that this isn't the case if you connect to an already running REPL process. See the CIDER documentation for more details.

Adding the middleware via Leiningen

Add the following, either in your project's project.clj, or in the :user profile found at ~/.lein/profiles.clj:

:plugins [[refactor-nrepl "3.10.0"]
          [cider/cider-nrepl "0.31.0"]]

Embedded nREPL

You may want launch your own nREPL server with CIDER and refactor-nrepl in it. You'll be able to cider-connect to said server.

For that, you can use the following (more info can be found in the nREPL Server docs and CIDER docs):

(def custom-nrepl-handler
  "We build our own custom nrepl handler, mimicking CIDER's."
  (apply nrepl-server/default-handler
         (conj cider.nrepl.middleware/cider-middleware 'refactor-nrepl.middleware/wrap-refactor)))
         
(nrepl-server/start-server :port port :address bind-address :handler custom-nrepl-handler)

The cider-middleware is technically optional but highly recommended.

Passing messages to and from refactor-nrepl

We've already called this a middleware, but we haven't really talked about what that means. refactor-nrepl is middleware for a REPL. Specifically it's middleware for a networked REPL, which is managed by nREPL. refactor-nrepl uses the running REPL to to gain insight about your project, in order to offer various refactorings.

Most likely you're already in an environment with a nREPL client available, so you don't have to worry about anything except sending and receiving messages:

=> (require '[nrepl.core :as repl])
nil
=> (with-open [conn (repl/connect :port 59258)]
     (-> (repl/client conn 1000)    ; message receive timeout required
       (repl/message {:op "eval" :code "(+ 2 3)"})
       repl/response-values))
;;=> [5]

In the example above we're talking to one of the built-in nREPL ops, eval, passing it the data :code "(+ 2 3)". The rest of the readme details or own nREPL ops which provide various refactoring support.

Available features

Configuration

Configuration settings are passed along with each msg, currently the recognized options are as follows:

{
 ;; Verbose setting for debugging.  The biggest effect this has is
 ;; to not catch any exceptions to provide meaningful error
 ;; messages for the client.

 :debug false

  ;; if `true`:
  ;;   * files that can't be `read`, `require`d or analyzed (with `tools.analyzer`) will be ignored,
  ;;     instead of aborting the early phases of refactor-nrepl execution.
  ;;   * ops like `find-symbol` will carry on even if there is broken namespace which we can not build AST for.
  ;; Setting `false` will be more strict, yielding possibly more correct usage,
  ;; but it also needs that `:ignore-paths` is correctly set, that all namespaces are valid,
  ;; that tools.analyzer is able to analyze all of them, etc
  :ignore-errors true
   
 ;; When true `clean-ns` will remove unused symbols, otherwise just
 ;; sort etc
 :prune-ns-form true

 ;; Should `clean-ns` favor prefix forms in the ns macro?
 :prefix-rewriting true

 ;; Should `clean-ns` always return the ns form even if there were no structural changes? Useful for when there would only have been whitespace changes from pretty-printing it again.
 :always-return-ns-form false

 ;; Should `pprint-ns` place a newline after the `:require` and `:import` tokens?
 :insert-newline-after-require true

 ;; Some libspecs are side-effecting and shouldn't be pruned by `clean-ns`
 ;; even if they're otherwise unused.
 ;; This seq of strings will be used as regexp patterns to match
 ;; against the libspec name.
 ;; This value is automatically augmented with configured clj-kondo's :unused-namespace config.
 :libspec-whitelist ["^cljsjs"]

 ;; Regexes matching paths that are to be ignored
 :ignore-paths []
}

Any configuration settings passed along with the message will replace the defaults above.

Artifact lookup

This middleware provides operations for obtaining information about artifacts from clojars, or mvn central. If JVM system proxy properties are defined (e.g. http.proxyHost, http.proxyPort) they will be used for downloading the artifacts.

Two ops are available:

artifact-list

Takes no arguments and returns a list of all available artifacts.

artifact-versions

Takes one required argument, artifact which is the full name of the artifact e.g. org.clojure/clojure, and one optional argument force which optionally triggers a forced update of the cached artifacts.

The return value is a sorted list, in decreasing order of relevance, with all the available versions.

find-symbol

This op finds occurrences of a single symbol.

find-symbol requires:

file The absolute path to the file containing the symbol to lookup.

dir Only files below this dir will be searched.

ns The ns where the symbol is defined.

name The name of the symbol.

line The line number where the symbol occurrs, counting from 1.

column The column number where the symbol occurs, counting from 1.

ignore-errors [optional] if set find symbol carries on even if there is broken namespace which we can not build AST for

The return value is a stream of occurrences under the key occurrence which is an list of maps like this:

{:line-beg 5 :line-end 5 :col-beg 19 :col-end 26 :name a-name :file \"/aboslute/path/to/file.clj\" :match (fn-name some args)}

When the final occurrence has been sent a final message is sent with count, indicating the total number of matches, and status done.

Clients are advised to set ignore-errors on only for find usages as the rest of the operations built on find-symbol supposed to modify the project as well therefore can be destructive if some namespaces can not be analyzed.

clean-ns

The clean-ns op will perform the following cleanups on an ns form:

Eliminate :use clauses
Sort required libraries, imports and vectors of referred symbols
Rewrite to favor prefix form, e.g. [clojure [string test]] instead of two separate libspecs
Raise errors if any inconsistencies are found (e.g. a libspec with more than one alias.
Remove any unused namespaces, referred symbols or imported classes.
Remove any duplication in the :require and :import form.
Prune or remove any :rename clause.
Use the shorthand version of metadata found if possible, and sort it alphabetically

The clean-ns requires a path which must be the absolute path to the file containing the ns to be operated upon. A client should also pass in a relative-path, which is the path relative to the project root, and which is used as a fallback when the path does not exist. (see clj-refactor.el #380).

The return value, ns is the entire (ns ..) form in prestine condition, or nil if nothing was done (so the client doesn't update the timestamp on files when nothing actually needs doing).

Pretty-printing the (ns ..) form is surprisingly difficult. The current implementation just puts stuff on the right line and delegates the actual indentation to the client.

In the event of an error clean-ns will return error which is an error message intended for display to the user.

Warning: The clean-ns op dependes on tools.analyzer to determine which vars in a file are actually being used. This means the code is evaluated and any top-level occurrences of (launch-missiles) should be avoided.

This op can be configured.

resolve-missing

The goal of the op is to provide intelligent suggestions when the user wants to import or require the unresolvable symbol at point.

The op requires symbol which represents a name to look up on the classpath. This symbol can be qualified, e.g. walk/postwalk or Pattern/quote will yield the correct result, even though the first is a qualified reference to a clojure var and the second a reference to a static java method.

The op also now expects (although does not require) ns, the current namespace expressed as a string.

The return value candidates is a list of ({:name candidate.ns :type :ns} {:name candidate.package :type :type} ...) where type is in #{:type :class :ns :macro} so we can branch on the various ways to make the symbol available.

:type means the symbol resolved to a var created by defrecord or deftype
:class is for Java classes but also includes interfaces.
:macro is only used if the op is called in a cljs context and means the var resolved to macro.

The additional property :already-interned (boolean) indicates if the current namespace (as passed as ns) already had the given suggested interned (e.g.Thread and Object are interned by default in all JVM clojure namespaces). This helps avoiding the insertion of redundant requires/imports.

hotload-dependency

Loads a new project dependency into the currently active repl.

The op requires coordinates which is a leiningen style dependency.

The return value is a status of done and dependency which is the coordinate vector that was hotloaded, or error when something went wrong.

find-used-locals

This op finds available and used local vars in a selected s-expression in a ns on the classpath. In clj-refactor we use this as the underlying op for the extract-function refactoring.

This op requires file which is the path of the file to work on as well as line and column. The enclosing s-expression will be used to determine the available and used locals.

Both line and column start counting at 1.

Return values status of done and used-locals which is a list of unbound vars, or error when something went wrong.

The returned symbols' order is based on the order of their occurrence in the macro expanded s-expression (that means reversed order for threading macros naturally -- compared to what you actually see).

stubs-for-interface

stubs-for-interface takes a single input interface which is a fully qualified symbol which resolves to either an interface or protocol.

The return value is edn and looks like this:

user> (stubs-for-interface {:interface "java.lang.Iterable"})
({:parameter-list "[^java.util.function.Consumer arg0]", :name "forEach"}
 {:parameter-list "[]", :name "iterator"}
 {:parameter-list "[]", :name "spliterator"})

The intended use-case for stubs-for-interface is to provide enough info to create skeleton implementations when implementing e.g. an interface in a defrecord.

extract-definition

extract-definition is based on find-symbol so it takes the same input values. The return value, definition is a string of edn which looks like this:

{:definition {:line-beg 4
              :line-end 4
              :col-beg 9
              :col-end 21
              :name \"another-val\"
              :file \"core.clj\"
              :match \"(let [another-val 321]\"
              :definition \"321\"}
 :occurrences ({:match \"(println my-constant my-constant another-val)))\"
                :file \"core.clj\"
                :name \"another-val\"
                :col-end 50
                :col-beg 38
                :line-end 5
                :line-beg 5})}

The key :definition contains information about the defining form, so the client can delete it.

The key :occurrences is a seq of all occurrences of the symbol which need to be inlined. This means the definition itself is excluded to avoid any special handling by the client.

version

This op returns, version, which is the current version of this project.

warm-ast-cache

Eagerly builds, and caches ASTs for all clojure files in the project. Returns status done on success and stats for the ASTs built: a list of namespace names as the odd members of the list and either 'OK' as the even member or the error message generated when the given namespace was analyzed. For example

'(com.foo "OK" com.bar "OK" com.baz '("error" "Could not resolve var: keyw"))

If a given end user sets their clojure.tools.namespace.repl/refresh-dirs, files outside said refresh-dirs won't be analyzed, resulting in safer, more efficient analysis.

rename-file-or-dir

The rename-file-or-dir op takes an old-path and a new-path which are absolute paths to a file or directory.

If old-path is a directory, all files, including any non-clj files, are moved to new-path.

The op returns touched which is a list of all files that were affected by the move, and needs to be visited by the client to indent the updated ns form while we await proper pretty printing support in the middleware.

This op can cause serious havoc if it crashes midway through the refactoring. I recommend not running it without first creating a restore point in your version control system.

namespace-aliases

Returns namespace-aliases which is a list of all the namespace aliases that are in use in the project. The reply looks like this:

{:clj
 {t (clojure.test),
  set (clojure.set),
  tracker (refactor-nrepl.ns.tracker clojure.tools.namespace.track)},
 :cljs {set (clojure.set), pprint (cljs.pprint)}}

The list of suggestions is sorted by frequency in decreasing order, so the first element is always the best suggestion.

This op accepts a :suggest option, default falsey. If truthy, it will also include suggested aliases, following Sierra's convention, for existing files that haven't been aliased yet.

find-used-publics

In case namespace B depends on namespace A this operation finds occurrences of symbols in namespace B defined in namespace A.

file The absolute path to the file being analyzed (namespace B).

used-ns The namespace that defines symbols we are searching for (namespace A).

Possible application of this operation to refactor a :refer :all style require into a refer or aliased style require.

Errors

The middleware returns errors under one of two keys: :error or :err. The key :error contains an error string which is intended for the end user. The key :err is used for unexpected failures and contains among other things a full stacktrace.

Development with `mranderson`

mranderson is used to avoid classpath collisions between any application deps and the deps of refactor-nrepl itself.

First make sure you have Leiningen 2.9.1 or later, lein upgrade if necessary.

lein version

To work with mranderson the first thing to do is:

lein do clean, inline-deps

This creates the munged local dependencies in target/srcdeps directory. After that you can run your tests or your REPL with:

lein with-profile +plugin.mranderson/config repl
lein with-profile +plugin.mranderson/config test

Note the plus sign (+) before the leiningen profile.

If you want to use mranderson while developing locally with the REPL, the source has to be modified in the target/srcdeps directory.

When you want to release locally to the following:

PROJECT_VERSION=3.5.3 make install

And here's how to deploy to Clojars:

git tag -a v3.10.0 -m "3.10.0"
git push --tags

Changelog

An extensive changelog is available here.

License

Distributed under the Eclipse Public License, the same as Clojure.

clojure-emacs/refactor-nrepl