Clojurians Log v2

My apologies, I've been distracted with a bunch of other things, but this is still right near the top of my list, I promise.

Well, if you list behaves anything like mine, I do not cross my fingers 😅

Unfortunately I don't think there's a way to do this right now. Cursive uses nrepl.cmdline to start the REPL because it takes care of a bunch of details, e.g. allowing middleware to be specified. Unfortunately it seems that the file name to use is hard-coded there: https://github.com/nrepl/nrepl/blob/a77bfa73135acdda094e95b7e83d227aa3739599/src/clojure/nrepl/cmdline.clj#L470-L480

sad. I had claude code make an entry point to start nrepl and call it from deps where I can pass the filename…guess it’s time for a PR to the nrepl lib?

(ns custom-nrepl
  "Custom nREPL entry point that allows specifying a custom port file name.

  This wraps the standard nrepl.cmdline functionality but adds the ability
  to write the port to a custom-named file instead of just .nrepl-port."
  (:require
    [clojure.java.io :as io]
    [nrepl.server :as server]))

(defn write-port-file
  "Write the server port to a custom port file and print startup message.

  The message format matches nrepl.cmdline exactly, as tools like CIDER
  and clojure-mcp parse this output to extract connection details."
  [port bind port-file-name]
  (let [port-file (io/file port-file-name)
        uri       (format "nrepl://%s:%d" bind port)]
    (.deleteOnExit ^java.io.File port-file)
    (spit port-file port)
    ;; This format MUST match nrepl.cmdline/server-started-message exactly
    (println (format "nREPL server started on port %d on host %s - %s" port bind uri))))

(defn start-server-with-port-file
  "Start an nREPL server and write its port to a custom port file.

  Options:
    :port - Port to listen on (default: 0 for random port)
    :bind - Bind address (default: 127.0.0.1)
    :port-file - Name of the port file to create (default: .nrepl-port)
    :handler - nREPL handler (default: nrepl.server/default-handler)

  All other options are passed through to nrepl.server/start-server."
  [& {:keys [port bind port-file handler]
      :or   {port      0
             bind      "127.0.0.1"
             port-file ".nrepl-port"}
      :as   opts}]
  (let [server-opts (dissoc opts :port-file)
        server      (apply server/start-server (mapcat identity server-opts))
        actual-port (:port server)
        actual-bind (or bind "127.0.0.1")]
    (write-port-file actual-port actual-bind port-file)
    server))

(defn -main
  "Main entry point that parses command-line arguments and starts the server.

  Usage:
    clojure -M:alias -m custom-nrepl --port-file .nrepl-test-port
    clojure -M:alias -m custom-nrepl --port 7888 --port-file .nrepl-dev-port

  Arguments:
    --port PORT          - Port to listen on (default: random)
    --bind ADDRESS       - Bind address (default: 127.0.0.1)
    --port-file FILENAME - Port file name (default: .nrepl-port)"
  [& args]
  (let [opts   (loop [args args
                      opts {}]
                 (if (empty? args)
                   opts
                   (let [[flag value & rest] args]
                     (case flag
                       "--port" (recur rest (assoc opts :port (Long/parseLong value)))
                       "--bind" (recur rest (assoc opts :bind value))
                       "--port-file" (recur rest (assoc opts :port-file value))
                       (do
                         (println (format "Unknown option: %s" flag))
                         (recur rest opts))))))
        server (apply start-server-with-port-file (mapcat identity opts))]
    ;; Keep the server running
    @(promise)))

Yes, this would be nice. I think that the nREPL team would probably be open to a PR, and I can update the version of nREPL that Cursive uses once it's in.

I made an MR…they are essentially asking me over and over to justify the need. Feel free to comment 😄 https://github.com/nrepl/nrepl/pull/400