Babashka

Babashka

Babashka is a fast-starting Clojure interpreter for scripting, powered by SCI. It has the full Clojure macro system (defmacro, syntax-quote, gensyms, binding, try/finally) — identical to Clojure, no limitations. For comprehensive SCI feature parity details, load references/sci-dialect.md from the Clojure skill.

Prefer Babashka built-in namespaces over shell commands and external tools.

Principles

• Pure functions at the core, side effects at the edges
• Define functions before use - no forward declares
• Never shadow built-in names (count, name, filter, run!, etc.)
• Prefer babashka namespace over shelling and avoid reimplementing things that babashka already provides
• Examples:
  • Prefer babashka.fs over shell file operations
  • Prefer babashka.http-client over curl/wget
  • Prefer babashka.http-server over python -m http.server
  • But they are just examples! See references/namespaces.md for more built-ins and patterns.

REPL-Driven Development

Planning is development. The REPL gate and exploration steps below apply whether you are implementing code, creating a plan document, or reviewing architecture. Use the REPL to test assumptions about APIs (fs/glob patterns, diff exit codes, JSON parsing) during planning — don't defer all exploration to the implementer.

All REPL-first patterns from the Clojure skill apply to Babashka: read → test → develop in REPL → verify → apply. If the Clojure skill is available, follow its S4 (REPL-First Development) and S3 (Coding Conventions) sections.

REPL gate

Before writing or planning Babashka code, establish a REPL connection to the bb session:

1. Use clojure_list_sessions to look for a session named bb
2. If found: use it for all exploration, validation, and incremental development
3. If not found: ask the user to jack in a Babashka REPL (Calva jack-in with Babashka project type) — the bb session is essential for effective development

REPL-loadable scripts

Scripts must be safe to (require '[my-module] :reload) without triggering side effects:

• No top-level I/O (println, spit, shell, HTTP calls) outside a defn
• No top-level System/exit (kills the REPL)
• No top-level defs with side effects (e.g. (def files (fs/glob ".")))

All behavior belongs inside functions.

Script gate for standalone entry points

Some scripts run as standalone commands while remaining REPL-loadable. Use the *file* / babashka.file gate - Babashka's equivalent of Python's if __name__ == "__main__":

(ns my-script
  (:require [babashka.fs :as fs]))

(defn main! [args]
  (println "Running with" args))

;; Only fires when run as a script, not when loaded via require
(when (= *file* (System/getProperty "babashka.file"))
  (main! *command-line-args*))

Data-oriented solutions

Design as pure data transformations. Three layers:

1. Gather (impure but safe): read the environment - globs, config, env vars. Capture as data.
2. Transform (pure): filter, validate, build the plan. Iterate freely in the REPL.
3. Act (impure, destructive): delete, write, shell out. Receives the plan as an argument.

;; Gather
(defn gather-candidates [dir patterns]
  (->> patterns
       (mapcat #(fs/glob dir %))
       (mapv (fn [f] {:path (str f) :size (fs/size f)}))))

;; Transform (pure - test freely in the REPL)
(defn filter-plan [candidates min-size]
  (filterv #(> (:size %) min-size) candidates))

;; Act (thin, receives fully-formed plan)
(defn execute! [plan]
  (doseq [{:keys [path]} plan]
    (fs/delete path)
    (println "Deleted" path)))

The plan IS the dry run. Print it, filter it, count it before acting.

REPL safety with side effects

Babashka scripts often touch the file system, spawn processes, and hit the network. When exploring side-effecting code in the REPL:

• Use fs/with-temp-dir for file operations - never test writes/deletes against real data
• Point at test fixtures or copies, not production directories
• Evaluate the gather and transform layers freely - they're pure data
• Only call the act layer once you've inspected the plan and confirmed the target is safe
• Never evaluate System/exit in the REPL - it kills the process

;; Safe REPL exploration: temp dir for destructive operations
(fs/with-temp-dir [tmp {}]
  (spit (fs/file tmp "test.txt") "hello")
  (let [candidates (gather-candidates tmp ["**/*.txt"])
        plan (filter-plan candidates 0)]
    (execute! plan)
    (println "Files remaining:" (count (fs/glob tmp "**/*")))))

Script Dependencies

For scripts requiring libraries, use script-adjacent bb.edn (v1.3.177+):

;; my-script.clj location: ~/bin/my-script.clj
;; bb.edn location: ~/bin/bb.edn
{:deps {medley/medley {:mvn/version "1.3.0"}}}

Babashka automatically finds and uses the adjacent bb.edn when running the script from anywhere.

shell vs process

shell: inherits I/O, throws on non-zero exit, tokenizes first string argument only.

process: captures streams to buffers, never throws, returns immediately.

Tokenization: only the FIRST string to shell is tokenized:

(p/shell "npm install" "-g" "nbb")     ;; correct: 3 args
(p/shell "npm install" "-g nbb")       ;; WRONG: "-g nbb" is one arg

$ macro: (-> (p/$ ls -la) :out slurp)

Deadlock warning: with large inputs and check, use :out :string.

CLI argument parsing (babashka.cli)

;; Basic parsing with coercion
(cli/parse-opts *command-line-args*
                {:coerce {:port :int :verbose :boolean}
                 :alias {:p :port :v :verbose}})

;; Separating flags from positional args
;; Use -- to separate: bb script.clj --flag -- positional-arg
(let [{:keys [args opts]} (cli/parse-args *command-line-args*
                                          {:coerce {:shards :int}
                                           :alias {:s :serial}})]
  (start! args opts))

Spec format with validation:

(def ^:export cli-spec
  {:port {:coerce :long :alias :p :default 8080 :validate pos?}
   :verbose {:coerce :boolean :alias :v}
   :paths {:coerce [] :default ["./"] :desc "Input paths"}})

(cli/parse-opts ["--port" "3000" "-v" "--paths" "src" "--paths" "test"] {:spec cli-spec})
;; => {:port 3000, :verbose true, :paths ["src" "test"]}

;; Generate help text
(cli/format-opts {:spec cli-spec})

• parse-opts ignores bare positional args. Use parse-args for {:opts {...} :args [...]}.
• Auto-coercion: "true"/"false" become boolean, "123" becomes number, "foo" stays string.
• :coerce [] collects multiple values into a vector.

Resource lifecycle (with-* pattern)

(defn with-server
  "Run f with HTTP server, clean up on exit."
  [port dir f]
  (let [stop-fn (server/serve {:port port :dir dir})]
    (try
      (f)
      (finally
        (stop-fn)))))

;; Compose lifecycle wrappers
(defn run-integration! [args]
  (with-server 8080 "test-data"
    #(with-process ["relay" "--port" "9090"]
       (fn []
         (let [result (p/shell {:continue true} "test-runner" args)]
           (System/exit (:exit result)))))))

Error handling

;; Exit with error to stderr
(binding [*out* *err*]
  (println "Error:" msg))
(System/exit 1)

;; Or throw with babashka exit code
(throw (ex-info "Failed" {:babashka/exit 1}))

Common mistakes

bb.edn Tasks

Define reusable tasks with automatic CLI parsing:

{:paths ["scripts"]
 :tasks
 {summarize {:doc "Generate summary report"
             :requires ([babashka.cli :as cli])
             :task (exec 'my-script/main)
             :args->opts [:input :output]}}}

Run: bb summarize input.xml output.txt

Namespace reference

For built-in namespaces, shell command replacements, HTTP patterns, addable deps, and extended examples, see references/namespaces.md.

Key built-ins (no deps required): babashka.fs, babashka.process, babashka.cli, babashka.http-client, babashka.http-server, cheshire.core, clojure.edn, clojure.string.

Built-In Libraries

Always available without deps.edn:

• Data: cheshire.core (json), clojure.data.csv, clojure.data.xml, clj-yaml.core, cognitect.transit
• Core: clojure.string, clojure.set, clojure.walk, clojure.edn, clojure.pprint
• Time: java.time.* package
• Async: clojure.core.async
• HTTP: org.httpkit.client, org.httpkit.server

Source Material

• Babashka Book: https://book.babashka.org/
• babashka.fs: README · API
• babashka.process: README · API
• babashka.cli: README · API
• babashka.http-client: README · API
• Tasks: https://book.babashka.org/#tasks
• Pods: docs · registry + examples
• Examples: README · scripts

Gotchas

• Path separators: Use (fs/path "dir" "file") not string concatenation
• Reader conditionals: Babashka uses :bb feature: #?(:bb ... :clj ...)
• Glob patterns: ** forces recursive; * is single directory level. **/*.ext does NOT match root-level files; use **.ext to include them
• Resources on classpath: Requires {:paths ["resources"]} in bb.edn
• delete-tree: does not follow symlinks. Use :force true for read-only files