introduced variable cider-clojure-cli-global-aliases

[behrica]

This PR introduces a variable cider-clojure-cli-global-aliases
Discussed here: https://clojurians.slack.com/archives/C0617A8PQ/p1708857780583699

It allows a user to have a "global" system wide set of aliases, which get added by cider to each repl start.
It allows to combine "project specific aliases" and" global aliases"

[vemv]

Looks like a reasonable start, let's see what @bbatsov thinks as well

(note as future steps: there's test coverage for this area - easy to extend)

[bbatsov]

I get the intent, but I'm curious why is the current variable considered to be project-specific, given that nothing about it implies it. Might be better to actually add something name cider-clojure-cli-project-aliases instead that's meant to be used only via .dir-locals.el.

If we go with your approach the documentation for the existing defcustom will need to be updated. I also think this will need some coverage in the user manual.

[vemv]

Might be better to actually add something name cider-clojure-cli-project-aliases instead that's meant to be used only via .dir-locals.el.

This would work as well (it's basically the same endgame as proposed in this PR - two variables).

However over the last few years we've taught people to set cider-clojure-cli-aliases in .dir-locals.el (and/or that's what people do anyway), so changing the intended semantics for cider-clojure-cli-aliases would seem overly disruptive.

[bbatsov]

Yeah, that's fair. As I never used clojure-cli much, it's hard for me to assess whether people have more need for global aliases or project aliases (e.g. how like it is that those differ at all, as with many build system I have more or less the same setup across many projects)

[behrica]

I think that most people have need for 2 things:

• global alias for some functions they want to have always available, in any project
• project specific alias, like test , dev in slide variations of name

-> ideally you want be able to "add" them together
-> the globals, should usually be first (they do not define :main entry points, the add functions to ns 'user for example)

[vemv]

Agreed - that's what most people would expect. You have the green light for the PR as-is, simply follow the suggestions when you have the chance!

[vemv]

Hi @behrica, feel free to polish this PR these days, would be good timing in preparation for the next major CIDER release.

[yuhan0]

This wording (also the existing docstring for cider-clojure-cli-aliases) seems potentially confusing - one might mistake them for an actual '(":list" ":of" ":strings"). I'd suggest something like:

Global aliases to include when jacking in with the clojure CLI.
This value should be a string of the form ":foo:bar", and
will be prepended to the value of `cider-clojure-cli-aliases'.

[yuhan0]

Also shouldn't the type technically be '(choice string (const nil))? I see the same empty-string nil-punning for several other defcustoms above, not sure how idiomatic this is in elisp.

[behrica]

I updated comment as proposed.

Regarding the "type" I was not sure about it, so left it as is