QMCLJS

Use ClojureScript instead of QML for QtQuick applications.

For now, this repository contains only a minimal working example of ClojureScript code in a QML application.

Minimal example

Prerequisites

• ClojureScript compiler cljsc

  Follow the first few steps of the ClojureScript quick start guide to get a working cljsc.

• qmlviewer comes with Qt (on archlinux)

Files

Create a ClojureScript file called minimal.cljs with the following content:

(ns minimal)

(defn ^:export hello []
  (str "Hello" " " "world!"))

Save the following QML code in a file named minimal.qml:

import QtQuick 1.1
import "qmcljs.js" as CLJS

Text {
  text: CLJS.minimal.hello()
}

QML does not allow the modification of the JavaScript root object, but imported JavaScript may do as it wishes, so we create a file qmcljs.js that loads the actual (compiled) code:

.pragma library
Qt.include("minimal.js")

You may also find these files in examples/minimal/ in the github repository.

Compile & Run

Compile using :simple optimisations, :advanced currently does not work. If you know why, please do tell.

$ cljsc minimal.cljs '{:optimizations :simple :pretty-print true}' > minimal.js

Run the application in the standalone qmlviewer:

$ qmlviewer minimal.qml

Limitations

• Development compilation (no optimisation, multiple code files + dependencies file) is untested.

  Everything else is probably untested, too.

• No advanced compilation mode for now

  This might actually be easy to fix. If you are familiar with ClojureScript please have a look.

• Avoid non-alphanumeric characters (including \-) for ^:exported functions and namespaces, because QML is not aware of ClojureScript mangling

  This is probably rather impossible to fix without delving deep into QML internals. Since this affects only ^:exported functions called from .qml files, not general ClojureScript functions, it is low priority for now.

Immediate Roadmap

• Port some QML examples to ClojureScript.
• Provide a library for commonly used functions specific to QML interop (seqs as ListModel comes to mind).
• Find out what's wrong with advanced compilation
• Test what parts of the closure library work
• ...

Contributing

Contributions welcome!

Send pull requests, open issues, questions, feedback ..what are you waiting for?

License

Nothing here right now, so no license.

Porting of examples is subject to their licenses.

The soon™ to come library is probably going to be BSD.