Leiningen plugin to execute Clojure scripts

The recommended way is to install as a global plugin in ~/.lein/profiles.clj:

{:user {:plugins [[lein-exec "0.3.7"]]}}

You may also install as a project plugin in project.clj:

:plugins [[lein-exec "0.3.7"]]

Either install as a plugin:

$ lein plugin install lein-exec "0.1"

Or, include as a dev-dependency:

:dev-dependencies [[lein-exec "0.1"]]

This blog post covers lein-exec with examples:

Scripting Clojure with Leiningen 2

lein exec [-p]
lein exec -e[p] <string-s-expr>
lein exec [-p] <script-path> [args]

When invoked without args it reads S-expressions from STDIN and evaluates them. When only option -p is specified, it evaluates STDIN in project context.

-e  evaluates the following string as an S-expression
-ep evaluates the following string as an S-expression in project (w/classpath)
-p  indicates the script should be evaluated in project (with classpath)

cat foo.clj | lein exec
lein exec -e '(println "foo" (+ 20 30))'
lein exec -ep "(use 'foo.bar) (pprint (map baz (range 200)))"
lein exec -p script/run-server.clj -p 8088
lein exec ~/common/delete-logs.clj

Optional args after script-path are bound to clojure.core/*command-line-args*

Thanks to the pomegranate library in Leiningen, lein-exec exposes an API to specify dependencies that can be added dynamically to the CLASSPATH:

(use '[leiningen.exec :only (deps)])
(deps '[[ring/ring-core "1.0.0"]
        [ring/ring-jetty-adapter "1.0.0"]])
(deps '[[foo/bar "1.2.3"]]
      :repositories {"myrepo" "http://mycorp.com/repositories/"})

This downloads dependencies from Maven Central and Clojars if required, and uses the local repo on subsequent runs.

This may be applicable to Unix-like systems only.

To run executable Clojure script files, you need to download the lein-exec and lein-exec-p scripts, make them executable, and put them in PATH. After downloading the scripts, you may also need to edit them in order to specify the correct name for the Leiningen executable.

$ wget https://raw.github.com/kumarshantanu/lein-exec/master/lein-exec
$ wget https://raw.github.com/kumarshantanu/lein-exec/master/lein-exec-p
$ chmod a+x lein-exec lein-exec-p
$ mv lein-exec lein-exec-p ~/bin  # assuming ~/bin is in PATH

Executable Clojure script files that need not run only in project-scope should have the following on the first line (shebang):

#!/usr/bin/env lein-exec

or,

#!/bin/bash lein-exec

Executable Clojure script files that are supposed to run only in project-scope should have the following on the first line (shebang):

#!/usr/bin/env lein-exec-p

or,

#!/bin/bash lein-exec-p

Windows users may not have the shebang header goodness, but they can use the provided scripts (URLs below) as a convenience:

• lein-exec.bat
• lein-exec-p.bat

You can execute scripts as follows in a project:

$ lein exec scripts/foobar.clj              # mention script path
$ lein exec scripts/run-server.clj -p 4000  # with arguments

The script would have project dependencies and source packages on CLASSPATH.

It needs to be written as if would be eval'ed (rather than compiled) - example below:

(require '[clojure.string :as str]
         '[clojure.pprint :as ppr]
         '[com.example.foo :as foo])


(defn baz
  [y]
  (let [x (str/join y (foo/quux :bla-bla))]
    (ppr/pprint [x foo/nemesis])))

(foo/bar :some-stuff)

(do
  (println *command-line-args*)  ; command-line args as a list
  (foo/bar :some-stuff)
  (baz ", "))

Append the following to the namespace having -main fn:

(try (require 'leiningen.exec)
     (when @(ns-resolve 'leiningen.exec '*running?*)
       (apply -main (rest *command-line-args*)))
     (catch java.io.FileNotFoundException e))

Note: This works only on lein-exec 0.3.4 and later.

On Twitter: @kumarshantanu

On Leiningen mailing list: http://groups.google.com/group/leiningen

• https://github.com/edvorg (Edward Knyshov)
• https://github.com/jeroenvandijk (Jeroen van Dijk)
• https://github.com/geriatric
• https://github.com/hikoz
• https://github.com/mcandre (Andrew Pennebaker)
• https://github.com/mneilsen (Mike Neilsen [email protected])
• https://github.com/kbaribeau (Kevin Baribeau [email protected])
• https://github.com/sashton (Steve Ashton)

Copyright (C) 2011-2017 Shantanu Kumar and contributors

Distributed under the Eclipse Public License, the same as Clojure.