[ESS] Emacs/ESS is missing that feature

[Vitalie Spinu]

 >> Stephen Eglen <S.J.Eglen at damtp.cam.ac.uk>
 >> on Sun, 04 Aug 2013 08:18:58 +0100 wrote:

[...]


 > What is nrepl -- and why would it be better?  From my limited searching,
 > it is a repl for clojure, but do you think it would be better choice for
 > a next generation ESS?

I never got into details of nrepl but I did with swank an year and a
half ago. One thing to note is that swank/slime code is virtually
undocumented and in order to figure out how to implement stuff you have
to read and understand all the code. nrepl is newer and it looks to be
much better documented. Nrepl it is not intended for clojure only. As
docs say: "The default network protocol used is simple, depending
neither on JVM or Clojure specifics, thereby allowing (encouraging?) the
development of non-Clojure REPL clients. "

The fact that clojure interaction mode moved from swank to nrepl a
couple of years ago, can only mean that they had their reasons. Nrepl is
"fundamentally assyncronuous" and this looks like the correct way to
handle data transfers, data manipulation and statistical processing.

In plus I have my personal reasons. I want to properly learn clojure and
this looks like a good starting project. 

  Vitalie