Developing Babashka

You need lein for running JVM tests and/or producing uberjars. For building binaries you need GraalVM. Currently we use java11-20.2.0.

Clone repository

To work on Babashka itself make sure Git submodules are checked out.

$ git clone https://github.com/borkdude/babashka --recursive

To update later on:

$ git submodule update --recursive

REPL

lein repl will get you a standard REPL/nREPL connection. To work on tests use lein with-profiles +test repl.

Adding classes

Add necessary classes to babashka/impl/classes.clj. For every addition, write a unit test, so it's clear why it is added and removing it will break the tests. Try to reduce the size of the binary by only adding the necessary parts of a class in :instance-check, :constructors, :methods, :fields or :custom.

The reflection.json file that is needed for GraalVM compilation is generated as part of script/uberjar.

Test

Test on the JVM (for development):

script/test

Test the native version:

BABASHKA_TEST_ENV=native script/test

Tests for Libraries

Babashka runs tests of libraries that are compatible with it through script/run_lib_tests. To add tests for a new library, do the following:

• Add an entry for the library in deps.edn under the :lib-tests alias.
• Create a directory for the library in test-resources/lib_tests/ and copy its tests to there.
• Add an entry in run_all_libtests.clj to run the added test namespaces.

Build

See build.md.

JDBC

Findings from various experiments with JDBC drivers in babashka:

• Postgres: adds 3MB to the binary. It seems the maintainers have put in effort to make the driver compatible with Graal. The driver is part of bb since v0.0.89.
• Sqlite: I feel like I'm close to a working solution, but it hangs. It adds 20MB to the binary. Since sqlite has a nice CLI we could also just shell out to it (there's an example in the examples dir). We could also build a babashka.sqlite namespace around the CLI maybe similar to babashka.curl. See #385 for details.
• HSQLDB: easy to get going with Graalvm. Adds 10 MB to the binary. It's under a feature flag right now on master. See build.md for details. Derby and H2 are known to not work with GraalVM, so far this is the "best" embedded option from a Graal perspective. Setting the -Xmx value for Docker to 4500m got it to crash. 4800m did work, but it took 17 minutes (compared to 10 minutes without this feature).
• MySQL / MariaDB: can't get those to work yet. Work in progress in issue #387.

To progress work on sqlite and mySQL, I need a working Clojure example. If you want to contribute, consider making a an example Clojure GraalVM CLI that puts something in a sqlite / mysql DB and reads something from it.

Binary size

Keep notes here about how adding libraries and classes to Babashka affects the binary size. We're registering the size of the macOS binary (as built on CircleCI).

2020/10/30 Without httpkit client+server: 68113436. With: 69503316 = 1390kb added.

2020/05/01 Removed next.jdbc and postgres JDBC driver: 48304980

2020/04/23 Added next.jdbc and postgres JDBC driver: (- 51019836 48099780) = 2920kb added

2020/04/23 Added BigDecimal (- 48103868 47857732) = 246kb added

2020/04/18 Added clojure.data.xml 47808572 - 45923028 = 1886kb added.

2020/03/29 Added clj-yaml for parsing and generating yaml. 45196996 - 42626884 = 2570kb added.

2020/03/28 Added java.nio.file.FileSystem(s) to support extracting zip files 42562284 - 42021244 = 541kb added.

2020/03/22 Added java.io.FileReader 42025276 - 42008876 = 16kb added.

2020/03/20 Added transit write, writer, read, reader 42004796 - 41025212 = 980kb added (305kb zipped).

2020/03/19 Added java.lang.NumberFormatException, java.lang.RuntimeException, java.util.MissingResourceException and java.util.Properties to support cprop. 41025180 - 40729908 = 295kb added.

2020/02/21 Added java.time.temporal.ChronoUnit 40651596 - 40598260 = 53kb added.

2020/02/19, e43727955a2cdabd2bb0189c20dd7f9a18156fc9 Added fipp.edn/pprint 40598268 - 39744804 = 853kb added.

2020/02/09, c8fd1c7931d7842ebaec1fa8faf06d4ab58573bd Added java.lang.BigInteger and java.security.MessageDigest. 39281972 - 39072764 = 209kb added.

2020/04/02 v0.0.69 38883676

2020/01/24, 43eef7075f9dac038d8d28a5ee4e49b6affd9864: 38.3mb, 11.1mb zipped Added hierarchies (derive, isa?, etc).

2020/01/23, 485fef7df54d6701936704573468a1ec4c66d221: 37.4mb / 10.9mb zipped Added: StringBuilder, java.io.{Reader,Writer,PrinterWriter,PushbackReader}

2020/01/08, 303ca9e825d76a4a45bc4240a59139d342c13964: 36.9mb / 10.8mb zipped

Removing cheshire from bb: 36.2mb / 10.5mb zipped.