Requesting Feedback on Dev-Local getting started

General Announcements
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Howdy! If you are using dev-local or have gone through our documentation on dev-local located here: https://docs.datomic.com/cloud/dev-local.html, we are considering improvements to our getting started process with dev-local and we would like to hear from you!

Please feel free to e-mail us with your feedback via support@cognitect.com or just respond to this thread with your thoughts on the experience.

Cheers,
Jaret

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I’m not sure how feasible this is but

I want to just brew install datomic-dev or brew update datomic-dev

I can’t really pin down why downloading zips doesn’t feel right

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Pretty easy setup on my end. Everything worked the way I expected, and worked well.

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I’m coming at this from being a long-time REBL user, so as far as I’m concerned Datomic dev-local just happens to be bundled free with REBL :slight_smile:

On macOS, the process is simple enough: unzip, run ./install, create a folder for the databases to live in and setup ~/.datomic/dev-local.edn, start a REPL and go through the tutorial:

clj -Sdeps '{:deps {com.datomic/dev-local {:mvn/version "0.9.195"}}}'

I haven’t tried this yet on Windows but I would expect the mvn commands to work but not the rest of the install script, so perhaps offer an install.bat script for Windows users?

I’ve tried to learn Datomic a few times in the past and this was a much simpler process than it had been before with the earlier free/dev versions so I’ll probably stick with it this time.

I’m too early on the curve to have any feedback on the divert/import stuff.

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My current issues:

  • I can’t access older versions
  • It’s hard to setup, even for experienced developers. I setuped the project on version X. Then the next developer download and install Y, bumped projeto to Y. Then I came back to project and it not work anymore. I need to bump and break his setup again.
  • It’s hard to setup CI. “Just use your maven” isn’t “just”.
  • It’s hard to explain to outsiders how/why they need to login/download/install a thing just to run my “Proof of Concept” app. “- Why you don’t use docker” they said.
  • I can’t blog about it. Or I blog for ppl that already know/run datomic, or i spend my hole blog post explaining why/how to “login/download/install”

What I expect from cognitect

  • for “community”:
    An easy to use experience, like com.datomic/datomic-free "0.9.5697" for beginners/learners/demos/tutorials. No one will create a account, download stuff, install, configure, etc… just for learn a new technology (we are clojure devs. we learn at REPL).
    docker run clojure:tools-deps-alpine clojure -Sdeps '{:deps {com.datomic/datomic-free {:mvn/version "0.9.5697"}}}' -e "(require 'datomic.api)" << this should work.

It would allow us to create libs (and test they on free CI), prototypes, examples, demos, tutorials and convince more people to learn (and buy) datomic.

  • for “pro”:
    An easy to use expeciencie like datomic-pro always been. Just setup credentials on maven settings and everything work as expected. If someone bump to the new datomic, no one needs to “login > email > download > install” a new thing.

In short words:
Why things aren’t easy as in 2017, when I started to use datomic?

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I agree with @souenzzo. If it’s possible, it’d be great for dev-local to be made available from Maven/Clojars. Since we need dev-local available on CI, we need to deal with uploading the JAR to a S3 Maven repo. Afaik, there isn’t a built-in way to do this (I had to write this). I’m guessing most folks will be in the same situation. Needing to figure that out raises the barrier to entry. That route will also require you to install and set up AWS creds before even opening a REPL. For those not using AWS, this is another painful step. (To avoid that, you could, of course, go and manually download and install the dev-local version. That itself is becomes a small but annoying additional step.)

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Maybe something like sudo xcodebuild -license – every js dev types this about once a year on their macbook to accept license and install the compiler tools, right? You could build it into deps

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I wanted to notify everyone in this thread that based on the feedback here, we have released a new version of Dev Tools that provides dev-tools via the Cognitect maven repo. The announcement is here:

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I’m really happy with this release :smiley:

As a “pro” user, I am completely satisfied

But nothing changed “for community”. I hope that it will be addressed at some point.