I haven't used React, but I think it's very similar. You have a state atom and then a datastructure that represents the GUI and associated callbacks that modify the atom. So it ends up feeling very functional. It doesn't use hiccup, but it's a similar structure. I've got to say it was fantastic. The least painful GUI programming I've ever done. The core architecture isn't opinionated so there is a little boilerplate/plumbing to setup but then it's very smooth sailing. It even has a very handy memoization structure that allows you to seamlessly have intermediary derived states that update automatically. I release an app using it and it was very performant, used some Java CV libs and drew diagrams to the canvas and it was all very snappy.
My only minor complaint was that the final bundle was like 150MB, which given the scope of the app seemed a bit gross - but it's manageable. And as usual, buy default, the JVM gobbles up and doesn't release memory back to the OS which is annoying. But i think it's surmountable and In theory you could trim that all further with GraalVM. Just out of the box it's not the best for little hello-world apps
I’ve found cljfx very productive. Steep learning curve, and the abstractions are somewhat leaky, but it’s worth the pain around the edges for the core workflow. Wrapping controls like ControlsFX is trivial. We’ve written a wrapper for TestFX as well so we have full functional tests and everything gets built, tested, jlinked and jpackaged continuously. It’s been one of the least painful projects I’ve ever worked on tbh.
Do you have any good resources on how to use jlink/ jpackage with Clojure? Do you somehow embed it in a Uberjar or is the Uberjar part of the package besides the JRE?
You build your Clojure app as an uberjar, yes. Only gotcha here is to remember "-Dcljfx.skip-javafx-initialization=true" so the JFX thread doesn't get started during build, and I've had no problems using Clojure's direct linking either. You use jlink[1] to create a custom runtime JRE image (this isn't strictly necessary if you're deploying to machines with a JRE but it cuts down on moving parts and gives you more control). jpackage[2] then takes that runtime image and your uberjar and creates installers for Mac/Windows/Linux. Both are command line tools, and we just have GitHub Actions that cut new releases for each platform when we tag something with a new version.
Worth also keeping an eye on jDeploy[3] which adds extra goodies like auto updates, at the cost of some npm shenanigans. Not something I've played with yet though.
jDeploy developer here. No shenanigans, I swear. npm just simplified things. Some have expressed interest in adding self-hosting options, so I'll likely add support for that. It's open source too, so others could potentially add other hosting options also.
Yeah sorry I didn't mean anything underhanded, it's just a complication that made me reluctant to try it out initially. Honestly if you wanted to offer a whole turnkey commercial service with hosting and analytics and stuff I could imagine being drawn to that.
Thank you for the tips! At OrgPad, we currently use the system-wide JRE since we control the whole VM, this is not a huge issue. We build & deploy by just copying the (uber)jar and restarting the systemd service. Quite simple but I like to keep up with some other approaches and we never know, when we have to do a desktop app or something.
https://github.com/cljfx/cljfx/
I haven't used React, but I think it's very similar. You have a state atom and then a datastructure that represents the GUI and associated callbacks that modify the atom. So it ends up feeling very functional. It doesn't use hiccup, but it's a similar structure. I've got to say it was fantastic. The least painful GUI programming I've ever done. The core architecture isn't opinionated so there is a little boilerplate/plumbing to setup but then it's very smooth sailing. It even has a very handy memoization structure that allows you to seamlessly have intermediary derived states that update automatically. I release an app using it and it was very performant, used some Java CV libs and drew diagrams to the canvas and it was all very snappy.
My only minor complaint was that the final bundle was like 150MB, which given the scope of the app seemed a bit gross - but it's manageable. And as usual, buy default, the JVM gobbles up and doesn't release memory back to the OS which is annoying. But i think it's surmountable and In theory you could trim that all further with GraalVM. Just out of the box it's not the best for little hello-world apps