NOTE: This page is no longer active. It was superseded by Reader Conditionals and included in Clojure 1.7 and ClojureScript.
Problem
There are Clojure dialects (Clojure, ClojureScript, ClojureCLR) hosted on several different platforms. We wish to write libraries that can share as much portable code as possible while leaving flexibility to provide platform-specific bits as needed, then have this code run on all of them.
Use cases for platform-specific functionality currently handled by cljx:
Use case | Example (cljx) | Example (feature expr) |
---|---|---|
Platform-specific require/import | In .cljx file which is preprocessed into .clj and .cljs files: | In .clj file loadable in both Clojure and ClojureScript: |
Exception handling, catching "all" - see issue below on why this is not a complete solution in either case. | In .cljx file which is preprocessed into .clj and .cljs files: | In .clj file loadable in both Clojure and ClojureScript: |
Platform-specific calls for "hosty" library things (strings, math, dates, random numbers, uris, reflection warnings) | In .cljx file which is preprocessed into .clj and .cljs files:
| In .clj file loadable in both Clojure and ClojureScript:
|
Protocol invocation (CLJS internal protocol names start with -, CLJ interfaces do not) | In .cljx file which is preprocessed into .clj and .cljs files: (See "-deref" in CLJS vs "deref" in CLJ.)
| In .clj file loadable in both Clojure and ClojureScript: |
Extending protocols to implementation-specific classes | In .cljx file which is preprocessed into .clj and .cljs files: | In .clj file loadable in both Clojure and ClojureScript: |
Proposal summary
The feature expression proposal includes the following items:
Issues
Below are important issues considered and current status.
Name | Description | Proposed | Status |
---|---|---|---|
Version checks | Should feature expressions support broader kinds of expressions (JDK or Clojure version ranges, etc)? | Not included | |
ClojureCLR delimited symbols | ClojureCLR supports a wider set of symbols via a |-delimited extension which cannot be read if in feature expressions from the CLJ or CLJS readers. | Add support for |-delimited symbols in CLJ, CLJS. Issues involved relate to | Not included (reconsider in future) |
Portable "catch all" errors | It is currently difficult even with feature expressions to easily "catch all" in CLJS (like catch Throwable). Note: This is orthogonal to feature expressions but important to the greater goal of portable code. | Proposal exists at Platform Errors with related tickets CLJS-661 and CLJ-1293. | OPEN |
CLJS namespace collisions | Existing code that uses a particular ns for macros (.clj file) may have conflicts if they use the same .clj for Clojure code in the same library. | This scenario is not too common and must be resolved by using non-overlapping namespaces for macros and ClojureScript code in a namespace. | No change needed |
Tooling on raw source of portable files is more complicated. | Editors and other tools that work on the raw source files cannot determine a specific dialect of Clojure based on the file extensions. This makes it more complicated to enable advanced editor features that require analyzing code. See Colin Fleming's comments (re Cursive). | ??? | OPEN |
CLJS File Loading Issue
Adding .clj files as valid file extensions means that parts of ClojureScript that currently specify a directory of .cljs files will include any .clj macro files already in that source tree and interpret them as .clj source files.
Some alternatives and their impact to existing file types or code:
Alternative | Description | CLJS .cljs | Macro .clj | CLJS .clj | CLJS build | CLJS Tools | CLJ Tools |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Separate macro path | Specify separate paths for ClojureScript code and macros. The .clj files in the code path are then unambiguously CLJS code. | - | Move to new macro dir | - | Pass macro path through stack | Need additional macro path | - |
Exclude namespaces | Specify a build option to exclude a set of namespaces from compilation. Macros would be explicitly specified there and could then be intermingled but ignored when pulling CLJS source from a directory. | - | - | - | Pass excluded ns list through stack | Need list of excluded macro ns'es | - |
Mark macro namespaces | Specify ns meta or other marker in .clj macro files so that they can be excluded based on file inspection. | - | Mark as macro ns | - | Needs to parse all .clj files to check if macro ns | - | - |
Mark regular portable namespaces | Specify ns meta or other marker in .clj source files so that they can be included based on file inspection. | - | - | Mark as portable | Needs to parse all .clj file to check if portable ns | - | ? |
Specify a portable file extension | Define a new unambiguous file extension (.cljc) to indicate a portable source file to be read in multiple host envs. (The .cljx extension is somewhat analogous although it only exists during preprocessing.) Explored in more detail in next table. | - | - | New file extension .cljc | Pull in .cljc files as CLJS source | Look for .cljc files | Look for .cljc files |
Portable file extension consequences
This table explores the consequences and changes required if we added a new portable file extension across Clojure and ClojureScript (a proposed solution for the prior issue CLJS File Loading).
Where | Description of Impact | Change |
---|---|---|
CLJS | ClojureScript finds CLJS source files in a dir by .cljs extension | Look for both .cljs and .cljc as source |
CLJ | Clojure looks for CLJ source files by .clj extension | Look for both .clj and .cljc as source |
CLJS and CLJ | If both .cljc and either .cljs or .clj exist, which will be loaded? | Should prefer platform-specific file to common file (.clj or .cljs over .cljc). This enables the open extension case described below in Portable Libraries |
lein, mvn, other build tools | Find CLJ source files by .clj extension | Look for both .clj and .cljc as source |
lein cljsbuild and other CLJS tools | Find CLJS source files in a dir by .cljs extension | Look for both .cljs and .cljc as source |
CLJ or CLJS IDEs (CIDER, Fireplace, Light Table, Cursive, CCW, etc) | Need to recognize .cljc as potentially both .clj and .cljs files | Update editors and IDEs to be aware of portable Clojure files |
CLJS repls (Austin, Weasel, etc) | Need to recognize .cljc as CLJS file | Update each REPL tool |
Detailed proposal
Feature Sets
The platform feature will be one of: clj
, cljs
, or clr
. Users may supply their own features, which should, by convention, use namespaces. Platform-specified features will not be namespaced.
In Clojure, the initial feature set may be specified at start time with the system property clojure.features
, which is a comma-delimited list of symbols to add as features. The platform feature will always be added, regardless of whether it is set in the system property.
For example:
will yield the runtime feature set: #{:clj :arch/osx :my.app/prod :my.app/strictmath}
In ClojureScript, there is a new build option with key :features
that takes a set of keywords defining the features. The platform feature :cljs
is always added to this set, as in Clojure.
In addition to setting the features initially, users may bind *features*
around explicit calls to the reader.
Feature Expression Syntax
Common Lisp approaches this problem using feature expressions.
Each platform has a variable called *features* that is a set of keywords to indicate supported features.
The Reader understands a new kind of "feature expression". The reader macros #+ and #- are used to include or skip a form based on a feature expression:
- #+feature-expr form - include next form if feature-expr evaluates to true
- #-feature-expr form - skip next form if feature-expr evaluates to true
Feature expressions evaluate as booleans and are defined as follows:
feature - a symbol, evaluated as if:
- (not feature-expr) - returns logical not of feature-expr
- (and feature-expr*) - returns true if all feature-expr are true, otherwise false.
- (or feature-expr*) - returns true if any of its feature-expr are true, otherwise false.
Skipping in the reader is performed by binding *read-suppressed* to true for the next form.
Example:
(ns feature.expressions #+cljs (:require [goog.string :as gstring])) (defn my-trim [s] #+clj (.. s toString trim) #+cljs (gstring/trim s)) (my-trim " Hello CL? ")
Reading Unknown Tagged Literals
There may be tagged literals or classes that are not known or available on all platforms. The reader must be able to read but avoid constructing these entities when they are in excluded feature expressions.
Example:
The #js tagged literal is not known on the Clojure platform, but the reader should read and avoid trying to instantiate it.
ClojureScript File Loading
When code needs to be loaded based on a namespace, ClojureScript will first look for .cljs files, then for .clj files.
- cljs.compiler/rename-to-js - renames .cljs file name to .js file name.
- regex must cover both .clj and .cljs
- cljs.compiler/cljs-files-in - given a directory, finds all .cljs files to compile
- can grab .clj too, but may include macro files not previously included - how do we distinguish here??
- called-by backtraces:
- cljs.repl/analyze-source
- cljs.repl.browser/-setup - to support code reflection in the browser repl
- cljs.repl/repl - to support code reflection in the repl, populates :cljs.analyzer/namespaces in compiler-env
- cljs.compiler/compile-root
- cljs.closure/compile-dir
- cljs.closure/-compile (protocol Compilable on File)
- cljs.closure/build
- cljsc - main tooling entry point (often used to compile a directory of cljs)
- cljs.closure/build
- cljs.repl/analyze-source
- cljs.analyzer/ns->relpath - given a namespace, find the resource path
- check first for .cljs path, then .clj path (adds resource check where prior was simple string manipulation)
- cljs.closure/cljs-source-for-namespace - given a ns, find path and url of ns
- check first for .cljs resource, then .clj resource
- cljs.repl.rhino/goog-require - given ns, makes cljs resource path
- check first for .cljs resource, then .clj resource
- cljs.repl.browser/send-static - serves static resources
- add support for serving .clj as well as .cljs
ClojureScript tooling needs to be aware of the change in supported file extension names and possibly new build options. Need to ensure tools are able to support the new mixed-language projects well:
- lein-cljsbuild - most ClojureScript projects today are built with the lein-cljsbuild plugin.
- compiler.clj - needs to properly account for ClojureScript .clj files
- features - might need to add support for specifying non-default feature set when testing
- austin?
- what else?
Patches
JIRA Tickets and patches:
- http://dev.clojure.org/jira/browse/CLJS-27 - ClojureScript
- http://dev.clojure.org/jira/browse/CLJ-1424 - Clojure
- http://dev.clojure.org/jira/browse/TRDR-14 - tools.reader, used by ClojureScript
Building Portable Libraries
Alternate Approaches
Copy / paste
One approach is to maintain two versions of the same file that are largely the same but modify the platform-specific parts in each copy. This obviously works but is gross.
cljx
cljx is an implementation of feature expressions that:
- rewrites
.cljx
files containing feature expression-annotated code into external files based on well-known tags- The most common use is to use clj and cljs tags and write
.clj
and.cljs
files for consumption by other tools/compilers/etc
- The most common use is to use clj and cljs tags and write
- optionally applies the same transformation interactively via installation of a REPL extension
It has been used successfully by a number of projects (see the cljx README for a partial list). cljx's limitations include:
- It does not address portability of macros at all; it is strictly a source-to-source transformation. Macros continue to be written in Clojure, and must be rewritten or implemented conditionally on the contents of
&env
. - It does not provide any runtime customization of the "features" you can use; these are set either within build configuration (via cljx' Leiningen integration), or via the configuration of the cljx REPL extension. The latter technically is available for modification, but is not in practical use.
- The set of provided "features" is limited to one for Clojure (
#%2Bclj
) and one for ClojureScript (#%2Bcljs
). Further discrimination based on target runtime (e.g. rhino vs. node vs. v8 vs. CLR) would be trivial, but has not been implemented to date.
cljx expressions are typically applied:
- Inside ns macro
- Top-level forms
- Occasionally internal forms where it's concise
- (.getTime #%2Bclj (java.util.Date.) #%2Bcljs (js/Date.))
lein-cljsbuild "crossovers"
lein-cljsbuild provides a (deprecated, to be removed) feature called "crossovers" that provides a very limited preprocessing of certain files during the cljsbuild build process; a special comment string is removed, allowing one to work around the -macros
declarations required in ClojureScript ns
forms. Crossover files must otherwise be fully portable. Language/runtime-specific code must be maintained in separate files. However, (my) experience shows that this can quickly lead to the situation where one has to think a lot about in which file to put a specific function, in order to go though the whole preprocessing machinery. Functions are split into namespaces because of conditional compilation, and not because they belong to the same part or module of the program.
Tagged Literal
Define a custom tagged literal that implements conditional read-time expressions:
#feature/condf [ (and jdk-1.6%2B clj-1.5.*)
(call-my-fast-reducer-code)
else (some-old-fashioned-code) ]
Proof of concept here: https://github.com/miner/wilkins
References
The Common Lisp Hyperspec about the Sharp Sign macros:
Examples of Common Lisp's Feature Expresions:
- http://www.lispworks.com/documentation/lw50/CLHS/Body/24_abaa.htm
- http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/practical-a-portable-pathname-library.html
- http://cliki.net/features - list of Common Lisp "features" and what they mean
Maintaining Portable Lisp Programs:
Crossover files in lein-cljsbuild:
29 Comments
Hide/Show CommentsJul 22, 2012
Kevin Downey
I am not wild about the conditional stuff happening at read time, it means the conditionals have no data representation and cannot be manipulated as such
Jul 22, 2012
Stuart Halloway
Kevin,
Can you elaborate with an example?
Jul 27, 2012
Kevin Downey
with this design if you read
on clojure you get the list (+ 1 2) and on clojurescript the list (+ 2 3) and there is no indication that a compile time conditional was read. this means the conditionals will not be visible to anything that operates on datastructures rather than text.
how will macros be shared? I guess they would check `*features*` directly to decide if they want to emit something different for clojure or clojurescript
another thing is there is no indication that the above is basically a cond, besides the forms being written next to each other. compare to something like:
it is possible that we have to have conditionals at read time because some forms are readable on one host but another (vars? syntax quote in the reader does some class lookups I think, on the otherhand, syntax quote should be rewritten as a macro)
if issues with readable/unreadable forms are addressed between hosts, feature-cond above could be a macro that checks `*features*` so no change to the compiler or reader
Mar 05, 2013
Brandon Bloom
At first, I wanted to agree with you that it would be nicer to just have a Macro rather than introducing a new feature into the reader. However, after more thought, I think that this absolutely needs to occur at read time. The main reason is that, if it's a macro, then it will be visible to outer macro forms when it shouldn't be. Consider some macro which expects a symbol, but instead gets a (feature-cond ...) form. It will (assert (symbol? ...)) and fail, even though the feature-cond form might expand to a symbol, the outer macro has no way of knowing.
It seems like the expected thing is for this to happen almost equivalent to the C preprocessor, so the reader is the right place to do that.
Jul 27, 2012
Timothy Baldridge
The complaint I have with this feature is that now all the separate implementations of a given expression are housed in a single file. This closes off the system, disallowing future expansion (without getting a patch submitted upstream to the library provider). This gets to be a bigger issue when we start porting libraries to other platforms.
What I'd like to see is some sort of "patch" based system. I'd like to see some way where we can put JVM specific code into a single source file, and then allow users of the library to replace those JVM versions with CLJS versions, CLR, Python, or C versions as needed.
The common lisp method shown here is simple, but I have to say, it feels like a hack.
Jul 27, 2012
Kevin Downey
load-file is an expression, so any kind of feature expressions would allow for providing implementations in different files
Mar 05, 2013
Brandon Bloom
That assumes you have a runtime compiler, which ClojureScript does not. You'd need to run load-file in the context of the compiler, but ClojureScript (currently) emits top-level forms as JavaScript, rather than running them in the compiler's environment.
Jul 23, 2012
Roman Scherer
I received an email from Kevin Lynagh. He could not write to the wiki, so I post it here:
Hi Roman,
Jan 30, 2014
Chas Emerick
Just an update re: cljx, which I've been maintaining for some months now. It was rewritten for the
0.3.0
release to perform all of its transformations statically, i.e. it does not use runtime metadata and does not use the Clojure reader (or tools.reader for that matter). (The previous usage of runtime metadata and Clojure reader necessitated some compromises in the quality of the transformed output and in preventing the use of some language features tied to the compiler state/runtime, e.g. alias-namespaced symbols and keywords.)I've also added some REPL integration, so that namespaces defined in
.cljx
files are transformed and loaded/compiled as appropriate for the current REPL session (either Clojure or ClojureScript).These enhancements have made cljx a workable (and pleasant, IMO) solution to the problem of targeting multiple languages/runtimes from a single Clojure codebase.
I'll update this wiki page to include a link to cljx under "current solutions".
Jul 27, 2012
Stuart Halloway
Jul 28, 2012
Brandon Bloom
> Are those keywords ok? Is :jvm for Clojure and :js for ClojureScript better?
> Should ClojureScript add something like :rhino, :v8 or :browser as well?
:jvm isn't a good idea for Clojure, since :rhino is also on the JVM. If you were writing some ClojureScript code, and wanted to test for a Java package, you'd want to check for :jvm. Similarly, you'd want a :gclosure member as well, if there was ever an implementation that targeted JS without it.
I'd imagine the Clojure set could look like #{:clojure :java :jvm}
And the ClojureScript one could be #{:clojurescript :js :gclosure} potentially conj :jvm for Rhino
Because it will soon be possible to have #{:clojurescript :lua}
This raises an interesting point: Why a set? Why not a map? Here's an example Clojure map:
{:dialect :clojure, :clojure {:version "1.2.3"}, :target :java, :runtime :jvm, :jvm {}}
And one for ClojureScript:
{:dialect :clojurescript, :clojurescript {:version "2.3.4"}, :target :js, :js {}, :runtime :browser} ; maybe something for :gclosure version
This way the #+clojurescript and #-js things will still work like set memberships. We could come up with some way to include an arbitrary predicate against map values, or we could leave that to be feature not available to the reader, only to macros against *features*.
A few issues: Since this happens at read time, it may be too late to decide :v8 vs :rhino, etc. Although, some JavaScript shops/frameworks/teams/whatever do multi-compile sources for different browsers. ie. Do conditional logic by browser version, server side, rather than client side, serve up the browser-specific javascript. In that case, you even could support a :browser key with the various information there.
I feel like this needs some kind of cond macro. I should be able to check for "do I have a runtime that optimizes foo? if so, do this, otherwise, do it the slow way like this" I realize that I could use #+foo, then #-foo, but what if I had two possible optimizations? I'd need #+foo(x) #+bar(y) #-foo(#-bar(y)) ;; seems like I need some kind of "else" expression.
RE: read-time vs macro-expansion-time. Seems like the right thing for this is read-time because of symbol resolution, but we should also consider some compile-time macro support against the same dynamic var. In theory, it should be workable with all the standard macros and stuff, since it's just a set or map, but we should still explore it a bit, so we know we're not missing something.
Aug 01, 2012
Roman Scherer
I asked the Common Lisper's for some input over here:
https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en&fromgroups#!topic/comp.lang.lisp/x2k3XbW3LmA
Elias Mårtenson responded to one of my questions on
comp.alt.lisp. Here's what he wrote:
I can address one of the quest, whether they are better
implemented as a macro. The answer to this is clearly no. In
fact, it couldn't be implemented as a macro, because at the time
the macro is evaluated, the symbols making up the expression has
already been interned by the reader. Thus, if the form references
any packages that does not exist in your environment, you would
get an error in the reader, before your conditional expression
has had the chance to run.
A somehow related thread I found on this topic is here:
https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en&fromgroups#!topic/comp.lang.lisp/CBB4hzqRCS8
What are the next steps?
Aug 01, 2012
Kevin Downey
I would be careful conflating those issues with common lisp with clojure. clojure's reader is not the same as common lisp's and clojure's symbols are not the same as common lisp's. I think the only part of the clojure reader that has those kind of issues in syntax quote, which tries to resolve classes.
Aug 25, 2012
Brandon Bloom
Kevin is right. Try this out, it works:
(def ^:dynamic *features* #{'clojure})
(defmacro feature-cond [& exprs]
`~(-> (filter (fn [[feature expr]]
(contains? *features* feature))
(partition 2 exprs))
first
second))
(feature-cond
clojure (def x 1)
clojurescript (def y 2))
(feature-cond
clojurescript (* y 3)
clojure (* x 3))
Aug 02, 2012
Hugo Duncan
I would like to see the feature system being open to use by libraries. In pallet, we recently introduced features to be able to write providers that work with multiple versions of pallet, and I think it would make sense to replace this with whatever feature system ends up in clojure.
The current proposal seems to support this, but it would be good to clarify this as a requirement of the feature system.
Aug 05, 2012
Brandon Bloom
Again, if 'features (or whatever it is called) is a map, then you might be able to do something like (load-file (str "foo/" (:dialect features) ".clj")) or something like that... That wouldn't be possible as a bit-flag set.
Aug 23, 2012
Stuart Halloway
What problems, if any, could this change cause for existing code? Obviously pre-feature-expression code will be unable to read the forms. In particular:
Aug 26, 2012
Kevin Downey
feature-cond above would be readable in previous versions of clojure, and even other lisps for whatever that is worth.
Mar 06, 2013
Brandon Bloom
What if we provided read-time variants of unquote and unquote-splicing?
Here's a splicing example:
The code inside the #~ and #~@ forms would be run at read-time and subject to *read-eval*. This gives you the full power of Clojure for conditional compilation at read time. We could provide some standard function and macro utilities for conditional compilation that are available both at read and macro expansion time. Allowing for something like:
This proposal gives you the full power of Clojure for controlling conditional reading and compilation without adding dramatically new ideas (it's basically just syntax-quote at read-time).
May 06, 2013
Herwig Hochleitner
I love the consistency and minimalism of this approach.
One Issue however: It probably won't be possible to read-splice on the toplevel. Consider: What should (read-str "#~@(range 5)") yield?
I'm still +1 on this one and just forbid toplevel splices.
May 08, 2013
Kevin Downey
have you looked at what it would take to allow the reader to splice in forms at any point? with syntax quote it is a little easier because the expression has to be synax quoted to begin with before you can splice in to it.
May 09, 2013
Brandon Bloom
I guess at the top level, a splice would just assume an implicit "do".
May 09, 2013
Kevin Downey
the top level is the easiest case though, the gnarly cases are splicing in to nested data structures, that may be spliced together themselves.
May 09, 2013
Brandon Bloom
Oh, I though you were asking with respect to Herwig's comment.
Doesn't syntax quote already have this problem? Try `{1 ~@(list 2 3 4)} for example. You can do that, but you can't do `{1 2 ~@(list 3 4)}
Seems like a separate issue all together.
May 09, 2013
Kevin Downey
syntax quote at least can limit the scope of splicing and unsplicing to syntax quoted forms. if any recursive call to read can (some how?) returning multiple values I think the entire reader would be much more complex. I have no evidence of that, which is what I asked if you had looked in to what it would take.
I have no doubt it is possible to do, I just don't thing I'd care for the result
Jun 22, 2013
Brandon Bloom
Syntax quote also has this same problem:
It would be trivial to mimic that behavior with reader-level syntax quoting.
Alternatively, you could just return the splice form unmodified, as if quoted. Consider the Sequence form in Mathematica, which is basically clojure.core/unquote-splicing:
Since expansion is resolved from the inside out, returning a splice form would be a sensible thing to do in a nested quoting scenario.
May 09, 2013
Kevin Downey
pushing conditionals in to the reader does not save us from requiring the code to be readable on all platforms. it has to be readable for the reader to even recognize it as a form to throw away
May 11, 2013
Herwig Hochleitner
I guess recursive invokations of read could be replaced with read-seq-of-forms + concat et al.
That would buy us read-splice, but: Is it worth the performance cost? If yes, should read-seq-of-forms be made public?
I'm kind of meh on (= (read-str "#~@(range 5)") '(do 1 2 3 4 5))
If I want a do, I'll write (a regular form generating) it. `~@ sets a nice precedent.
Those complications make me wonder if #~@ serves any conceivable purpose, that #~ together `(~@) can't (or shouldn't) serve.
True, this should be an intended design constraint. We want to have the same basic clojure syntax on every platform, i.e. a very small superset of edn, right?
The reason we even need conditionals in the reader is that the reader already does some possibly platform-dependent side-effects, i.e. reader tags, defrecord instances and friends.
So let's just KISS the syntactic considerations goodbye for a moment:
That gets us to the real meat of the problem:
Say we have:
Under current reader rules, would the #platform tag have a chance to remove the form before the reader tried to apply the #asm tag?
I suspect that's not the case, which makes me wonder if it's worth changing the reader to allow reader tags to omit reader tags from their child form. This would imply the ability to generate new reader tags (and other reader side effects) in code a reader tag emits.
I also suspect that if we try to just allocate a couple of new reader table characters and work downwards from there, we will end up with pretty much the same code it would take to apply reader tags in a second pass, except it would be less general purpose.
We still might not want to expose it through reader tags, since it would alter their semantics on the input side. Opinions on this one?
Oct 07, 2014
Colin Fleming
This proposal additionally adds a lot of complexity to tools which work on unexpanded source, such as Cursive. In particular, with complicated conditional feature expressions it may no longer be possible to accurately identify which language a particular form is written in. Admittedly this is already a problem with CLJS macros, the only way to tell if the body of a syntax-quote block in a macro is Clojure or CLJS is to look at where the macro is actually used - I'd definitely welcome any steps to make that easier to test.
This isn't just applicable to Cursive, any tool which interacts with a debugger and allows breakpoints to be set will need to know the language of a particular line, since Javascript breakpoints will almost certainly be managed differently to JVM ones.
The lack of an explicit extension for mixed-mode files means that all tooling will have to assume that all Clojure files might potentially be treated as CLJS or code for any other platform - this hugely complicates things like completion and documentation lookup since docstrings may differ for a particular form across platforms. Currently things like numeric operators are functions in Clojure, and both functions and macros in CLJS. Identifying which the user is referring to is already complicated but with this change will be considerably more difficult. I much prefer the patch style system proposed by Timothy Baldridge where code is contained in platform specific files and combined somehow - this does sound like it would create a lot more code duplication, though.
I'd also like to ensure that the implementation will still maintain line/column information accurately, as CLJX currently does. I assume that's fairly easy, at least with the read time proposal.