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Connect Calva to Your Project

The recommended way is to:

Jack-in: Let Calva start the REPL for you

This way Calva can make sure it is started with the dependencies needed for a working Clojure and/or ClojureScript session. This is often referred to as Jack in (because that is what it is called in CIDER).

Jack-in supports both CLJ and for CLJS, and has built-in configurations for Leiningen, deps.edn, and shadow-cljs projects, as well as for the CLJS repl types: Figwheel Main, lein-figwheel (legacy Figwheel), shadow-cljs, and ClojureScript built-ins for both browser and node.js. Using jack-in provides your development environment with all the dependencies you need for Calva to work.

It works like so:

  1. Open your project root directory in VS Code.
  2. Issue the command Start a Project REPL and Connect: ctrl+alt+c ctrl+alt+j.
  3. Answer the quick-pick prompts telling Calva about project types and what profiles to start. (See the Jack-in Project Types and Profiles wiki page for more info if needed.)

See also: Workspace Layouts

Note

You must have a project file, such as project.clj for Leiningen or deps.edn for deps.edn, in the directory opened in VS Code in order for jack-in to work. If, after adding the project file, you experience an error during jack-in that says something could not be located, make sure you have the correct dependencies in your project file. For example, when using the Figwheel Main project type, you should have com.bhauman/figwheel-main in your project dependencies.

Aliases, profiles, builds

When Jack-in starts it will depend on the project type, and whether ClojureScript is involved or not, and if it is, what kind of ClojureScript project, what will happen next. Calva will analyze the project files and will then give you prompts with selections based on what is found there.

You will need some basic knowledge about the project and the project type terminologies to answer the prompts.

There are ways to tell Calva the answers to these prompts beforehand, so that Jack-in can be a zero-prompting command. Read on.

Customizing Jack-in

The main mechanism for customizing your Jack-in, including automating menu selections, and custom CLJS REPL types is Custom Connect Sequences.

There are also these settings:

  • calva.jackInEnv: An object with environment variables that will be added to the environment of the Jack-in process.
  • calva.myCljAliases: An array of deps.edn aliases not found in the project file. Use this to tell Calva Jack-in to launch your REPL using your user defined aliases.
  • calva.myLeinProfiles: An array of Leiningen profiles not found in project.clj. Use this to tell Calva Jack-in to launch your REPL using your user defined profiles.
  • calva.openBrowserWhenFigwheelStarted: For Legacy Figwheel only. A boolean controlling if Calva should automatically launch your ClojureScript app, once it is compiled by Figwheel. Defaults to true.

Note

When processing the calva.jackInEnv setting you can refer to existing ENV variables with ${env:VARIABLE}.

Troubleshooting

Command not found errors

If you get command not found error when Calva tries to start your project, and you know you have the command installed, it's probably because VS Code starts from an environment where the command is not on the $PATH. It can look like so:

lein update-in :dependencies conj '[nrepl,"0.8.3"]' -- update-in :plugins conj '[cider/cider-nrepl,"0.25.8"]' -- update-in '[:repl-options,:nrepl-middleware]' conj '["cider.nrepl/cider-middleware"]' -- repl :headless
/bin/sh: lein: command not found
Jack-in process exited. Status: 127

The fix is to always start VS Code from the command line:

$ code

You might need to first run the Shell Command: Install code command in PATH.

This will also make sure your REPL has access to the environment you probably expect it to have access to. See below.

Environment variables are not readable From REPL

If you've added environment variables in your OS, such as in your ~/.bashrc file (Linux), in order for them to be read in a REPL created by Calva's jackin command, VS Code must be started from a shell where the environment variables are defined. For example, if you can open a bash terminal and run echo $SOME_VAR and see the value there, then open VS Code from that terminal with code <project path>.

Connecting w/o Jack-in

If, for whatever reasons, you can't use Jack-in with your project (possibly because the REPL is started as part of some other job) all is not lost. Old fashioned Connect to a running REPL is still there for you. For all features to work in Calva while connecting to a running REPL, your environment needs to have REPL related dependencies set up.

However, just as before it can be tricky to get the dependencies right. Consider using Jack in to inform yourself on how to start your REPL to Calva's satisfaction. When you use Jack in, Calva starts a VS Code task for it and the command line used is displayed in the terminal pane used to handle the task. Reading that command line tells you what dependencies are needed for your project.

Even better: Copying that command line gives you the command to start the REPL with the correct dependencies.

All this said, I still recommend you challenge the conclusion that you can't use Jack-in.

Note

There is a Calva command for copying the Jack-in command line to the clipboard.