Use setMacro to flag macros in the api namespace

[carloshernandez2]

Problem

It is not possible to AOT-compile namespaces that use the defflow macro from the API namespace and get a faster development workflow as described here.

Description

Taking these namespaces as a starting point:

(ns death-by-compilation-clj.my-defflow
  (:require [clojure.test :refer :all]))

(defmacro defflow
  [name]
  `(def ~name 1))

(ns death-by-compilation-clj.my-dear-defflow
  (:require [clojure.test :refer :all]
            [death-by-compilation-clj.my-defflow :as my-defflow]))

(def ^{:macro    true}
  defflow #'my-defflow/defflow)

(ns death-by-compilation-clj.my-dear-test
  (:require [clojure.test :refer :all]
            [death-by-compilation-clj.my-dear-defflow :refer [defflow]]))

(defflow my-dear-test-test)

When running compile on death-by-compilation-clj.my-dear-test it successfully compiles and writes to disk. Then if I kill the REPL, modify the file and repeat the process, the following error is thrown:

Syntax error compiling at (death_by_compilation_clj/my_dear_test.clj:7:1).
Unable to resolve symbol: my-dear-test-test in this context

Solution

By calling the setMacro method on the Vars that correspond to macros in the API namespace, we can flag them as the compiler expects and also add the macro metadata.

References

• https://clojurians-log.clojureverse.org/clojure/2023-01-18

[acamargo]

Nice!