Looking at CLJ-2665 (in the 1.11 list mentioned in the latest deref), it has a caveat that seems to imply that if you use :refer with :as-alias the ns will not be loaded (based on the current patch) -- am I reading that correctly?

yes

there are some parts of this patch that are still up for debate and it has not been reviewed by Rich yet

Cool. Thanks. Just wanted to check I had read it correctly.

:as-alias says "don't require loading", :refer depends on loading, so you should really use :as in this case. really, everything about this is weird due to the history of use/require and as/as-alias. it's hard to back your way into a semantic model after the fact.

Linters will have fun...

clj-kondo could probably warn about :as-alias + :refer

well you might want to wait till it settles :)

it already supports this, it just doesn't warn. sure

Is there a chance https://clojure.atlassian.net/browse/CLJ-1239 will make it in to 1.11?