Getting Started

The only requirement for using Chestnut is that Leiningen, version 2 or greater, is installed. Leiningen will take care of downloading Chestnut, Clojure, and other dependencies, so it's literally all you need.

Leiningen and Clojure depend on Java, but chances are this will already be available on your system. You will need at least version 1.7. Oracle Java 1.8 is recommended.

Creating the Application

With Leiningen installed, open a terminal and type

lein new chestnut <name>

This will create a directory with the name of your project, containing an application skeleton that you can fill in. This directory also contains a file named README.md. It has instructions on how to get started that are specific to the version of Chestnut you are using. Make sure to look at it!

Quickstart for the Impatient

If you want to see your application running as soon as possible, try this.

In a terminal, start the Clojure REPL.

lein repl

Once you see the Clojure REPL prompt, user=>, type

(run)
(browser-repl)

(run) will initiate the Clojurescript compilation, start a web server, and start the Figwheel server to enable instant code reloading.

(browser-repl) will change your Clojure REPL into a Clojurescript REPL. It needs a connection with a browser to be able to evaluate Clojurescript, so at this point it's waiting for a browser to connect to it.

Once it seems everything has finished starting up and compiling, point your browser at http://localhost:10555. You should be seeing something like this: