MrAnderson

MrAnderson is a dependency inlining and shadowing tool. It isolates the project's dependencies so they can not interfere with other libraries' dependencies.

Is it good? Should I use it?

Yes and yes.

Use it if you have dependency conflicts and don't care to solve them. In unresolved tree mode MrAnderson creates deeply nested, local dependencies where any subtree is isolated from the rest of the tree therefore the same library can occur several times without conflicting. Or use it if you don't want your library's dependencies to interfere with the dependencies of your users' (leiningen plugins is a good example here). Or if you want to explore a bit more in the hellish land of dependency handling.

Usage

MrAnderson is a leiningen plugin. Put [thomasa/mranderson "0.5.3"] into the :plugins vector of your project.clj. You can also use it directly not as a leiningen plugin, see conjure-deps for an example.

Mark some of the dependencies in your dependencies vector in the project's project.clj with ^:inline-dep meta tag. For example:

:dependencies [[org.clojure/clojure "1.5.1"]
               ^:inline-dep [org.clojure/tools.namespace "0.2.5"]
               ^:inline-dep [org.clojure/tools.reader "0.8.5"]
               ^:inline-dep [org.clojure/tools.nrepl "0.2.3"]]

Only the marked dependencies will be considered by MrAnderson. (Both :inline-dep and :source-dep meta tags are supported.)

Then run

$ lein inline-deps

This retrieves and modifies the marked dependencies and copies them to target/srcdeps together with the modified project files -- their references to the dependencies need to change too.

After this you can start the REPL in the context of your inlined dependencies

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

Or run your tests with them

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

Release locally

$ lein with-profile plugin.mranderson/config install

Release to clojars

$ lein with-profile +plugin.mranderson/config deploy clojars

Alternatively the modified dependencies and project files can be copied back to the source tree and stored in version control. In this case you don't need the above mentioned built in leiningen profile.

Config and options

Two modes: resolved tree and unresolved tree

MrAnderson has two modes. It can either work on an unresolved dependency tree and create a deeply nested directory structure for the unresolved tree based on the marked dependencies or only shadow a list of dependencies based on a resolved dependency tree of the same dependencies. The latter is the default.

In unresolved tree mode the same library -- even the same version of the library -- can occur multiple times in the unresolved dependency tree. When processing the tree MrAnderson walks it in a depth first order and creates a deeply nested directory structure and prefixes the namespaces and the references to them according to this directory structure.

Let's see cider-nrepl's list of dependencies in the project file (as it is at the time of writing this README):

  :dependencies [[nrepl "0.6.0"]
                 ^:source-dep [cider/orchard "0.4.0"]
                 ^:source-dep [thunknyc/profile "0.5.2"]
                 ^:source-dep [mvxcvi/puget "1.1.0"]
                 ^:source-dep [fipp "0.6.15"]
                 ^:source-dep [compliment "0.3.8"]
                 ^:source-dep [cljs-tooling "0.3.1"]
                 ^:source-dep [cljfmt "0.6.4" :exclusions [org.clojure/clojurescript]]
                 ^:source-dep [org.clojure/tools.namespace "0.3.0-alpha4"]
                 ^:source-dep [org.clojure/tools.trace "0.7.10"]
                 ^:source-dep [org.clojure/tools.reader "1.2.2"]]

And the unresolved tree based on this list of dependencies for reference:

 [cljs-tooling "0.3.1"]
 [compliment "0.3.8"]
 [fipp "0.6.15"]
   [org.clojure/core.rrb-vector "0.0.13"]
 [org.clojure/tools.trace "0.7.10"]
 [cider/orchard "0.4.0"]
   [org.clojure/java.classpath "0.3.0"]
   [org.clojure/tools.namespace "0.3.0-alpha4"]
     [org.clojure/java.classpath "0.2.3"]
     [org.clojure/tools.reader "0.10.0"]
   [org.tcrawley/dynapath "0.2.5"]
 [cljfmt "0.6.4"]
   [com.googlecode.java-diff-utils/diffutils "1.3.0"]
   [org.clojure/tools.cli "0.3.7"]
   [org.clojure/tools.reader "1.2.2"]
   [rewrite-clj "0.6.0"]
     [org.clojure/tools.reader "0.10.0"]
   [rewrite-cljs "0.4.4"]
     [org.clojure/tools.reader "1.0.5"]
 [mvxcvi/puget "1.1.0"]
   [fipp "0.6.14"]
     [org.clojure/core.rrb-vector "0.0.13"]
   [mvxcvi/arrangement "1.1.1"]
 [org.clojure/tools.namespace "0.3.0-alpha4"]
   [org.clojure/java.classpath "0.2.3"]
   [org.clojure/tools.reader "0.10.0"]
 [thunknyc/profile "0.5.2"]
 [org.clojure/tools.reader "1.2.2"]

An example namespace of [org.clojure/tools.reader "0.10.0"] dependency of [rewrite-clj "0.6.0"] that is a dependency of [cljfmt "0.6.4"] will be prefixed like this:

(ns ^{:mranderson/inlined true} cider.inlined-deps.cljfmt.v0v6v4.rewrite-clj.v0v6v0.toolsreader.v0v10v0.clojure.tools.reader.edn)

and a reference to it in cider.inlined-deps.cljfmt.v0v6v4.rewrite-clj.v0v6v0.rewrite-clj.reader like this:

(:require [cider.inlined-deps.cljfmt.v0v6v4.rewrite-clj.v0v6v0.toolsreader.v0v10v0.clojure.tools.reader
             [edn :as edn])

In the resolved tree mode MrAnderson flattens the resolved dependency tree out into a topoligically ordered list and processes this ordered list. While processing MrAnderson prefixes all namespaces in the dependencies and the references to them. This also means that all dependencies even transient ones are handled as first level dependencies as they can only occur once in a resolved dependency tree.

And the resolved tree of the same project:

 [cljs-tooling "0.3.1"]
 [compliment "0.3.8"]
 [fipp "0.6.15"]
   [org.clojure/core.rrb-vector "0.0.13"]
 [org.clojure/tools.trace "0.7.10"]
 [cider/orchard "0.4.0"]
   [org.clojure/java.classpath "0.3.0"]
   [org.tcrawley/dynapath "0.2.5"]
 [cljfmt "0.6.4"]
   [com.googlecode.java-diff-utils/diffutils "1.3.0"]
   [org.clojure/tools.cli "0.3.7"]
   [rewrite-clj "0.6.0"]
   [rewrite-cljs "0.4.4"]
 [mvxcvi/puget "1.1.0"]
   [mvxcvi/arrangement "1.1.1"]
 [org.clojure/tools.namespace "0.3.0-alpha4"]
 [thunknyc/profile "0.5.2"]
 [org.clojure/tools.reader "1.2.2"]

The same namespace from tools.reader -- note that there is only one version of it available in the dependency tree 1.2.2:

(ns ^{:mranderson/inlined true} cider.inlined-deps.toolsreader.v1v2v2.clojure.tools.reader.edn)

and a reference to it in cider.inlined-deps.rewrite-clj.v0v6v0.rewrite-clj.reader looks like this:

(:require [cider.inlined-deps.toolsreader.v1v2v2.clojure.tools.reader
             [edn :as edn])

In the unresolved tree mode the usual way of overriding dependencies, eg. putting a first level dependency in the project file with a newer version of a library does not work. Also in this mode MrAnderson applies transient dependency hygiene meaning that it does not search and replace occurrances of a transient depedency namespace in the project's own files. To work around these limitations you can create a MrAnderson specific section in the project file and define overrides as such:

:mranderson {:overrides {[mvxcvi/puget fipp] [fipp "0.6.15"]}}

Note that the key in the overrides map is a path to a dependency in the unresolved dependency tree and the value is the new depedency node.

In the same section you can instruct MrAnderson to expose certain transient dependencies to the project's own source files as such:

:mranderson {:expositions [[mvxcvi/puget fipp]]}

Here you have to provide a list of paths to dependencies to be exposed.

To use the unresolved tree mode you can either provide a flag in the above mentioned section

:mranderson {:unresolved-tree true}

or you can provide the same flag on the command line:

$ lein inline-deps :unresolved-tree true

The latter supersedes the former.

Again: in the resolved tree mode no transient dependency hygiene is applied. Also the above described config options (overrides and expositions) don't take effect.

Further config options

All the options can be provided via CLI or the project file.

Option	Default	Description	Example
project-prefix	mranderson{rnd}	project pecific prefix to use when shadowing	lein inline-deps :project-prefix cider.inlined-deps
skip-javaclass-repackage	false	If true Jar Jar Links won't be used to repackage java classes in dependencies	lein inline-deps :skip-javaclass-repackage true
prefix-exclusions	empty list	List of prefixes which should not be processed in imports	lein inline-deps :prefix-exclusions "[\"classlojure\"]"
watermark	:mranderson/inlined	MrAnderson adds watermark as metadata to inlined namespaces. This allows tools like cljdoc to exclude inlined namespaces from a library's documented API. Cljdoc, for example, automatically excludes namespaces with any of :mranderson/inlined, :no-doc, :skip-wiki metadata.	:mranderson {:watermark nil} to switch off watermarking or provide your own keyword
unresolved-tree	false	Switch between unresolved tree and resolved tree mode	lein inline-deps :unresolved-tree true
overrides	empty list	Defines dependency overrides in unresolved tree mode	:mranderson {:overrides {[mvxcvi/puget fipp] [fipp "0.6.15"]}}
expositions	empty list	Makes transient dependencies available in the project's source files in unresolved tree mode	:mranderson {:expositions [[mvxcvi/puget fipp]]}
included-source-paths	nil	Determines which of the provided :source-paths (not :test-paths!) will be inlined. If nil or :first, the first source path (typically "src") will be the only one to be processed. If set to :source-paths, all :source-paths will be processed. If set a vector, that vector will be interpreted as the list of source dirs to be processed, as-is, omitting the project :source-dirs value.

Prerequisites

Leiningen 2.9.1 or above. For MrAnderson to work, does not mean your project is restricted to a java or clojure version.

Supported OSes and platforms

MrAnderson is tested and supported on Linux and macOS. Windows systems are not supported or tested against.

Projects that use MrAnderson

• cider-nrepl
• refactor-nrepl
• re-frame-10x
• iced-nrepl
• conjure via conjure-deps -- uses MrAnderson directly, not as a leiningen plugin

Related project

A really nice wrapper of mranderson can be found here.

Credits

• The engine of namespace renaming/moving mranderson.move although heavily modified now is based on Stuart Sierra's clojure.tools.namespace.move namespace from tools.namespace.
• Some ideas around namespace renaming/moving was borrowed from @expez my co-maintainer for refactor-nrepl in their fabolous work of rename-file-or-dir feature.
• @cichli did a round of profiling and perfromance/parallelisation fixes on mranderson which I took insipiration from
• Had amazing feedback, conversations around MrAnderson and dependencies with @bbatsov (MrAnderson's main client), @reborg, @SevereOverfl0w, @andrewmcveigh. Really grateful for the community and these nice people in particular.

License

Copyright © 2014-2022 Benedek Fazekas

Distributed under the Eclipse Public License either version 1.0 or (at your option) any later version.