So, if you are on osx and for some reason you cannot use latest CIDER (because it requires latest lein 2.8.3) and you need to pin 0.18.0 version of CIDER: 0) brew install gnu-tar 1) at the top of your dotspacemacs init file, add: (setq-default quelpa-build-tar-executable "/usr/local/bin/gtar") 2) add the following to dotpacemacs-addtional-packages

(cider :location (recipe :fetcher github
                         :repo "clojure-emacs/cider"
                         :files ("*.el")
                         :commit "97b95f5b5bb4f9c8f439375b4238d41fd5be9926"))