Support for spec-alpha2?

[alexander-yakushev]

It looks like the development of clojure spec-alpha2 (also widely and hilariously known as clojure.alpha.spec) is stalled for now (as confirmed by Alex Miller too: https://clojurians.slack.com/archives/C03S1KBA2/p1679924331305749?thread_ts=1679878261.044279&cid=C03S1KBA2). The library doesn't have a JAR release and not even a single git tag.

Orchard supports it nominally in orchard.spec.

Two questions:

1. How important is having support for an almost-abandoned alpha library?
2. If the support for it desired, how important is to test against it? We currently have to clone that repository in each CI job for dubious benefits.

[vemv]

Apparently the Spec browser supports Spec 2 https://docs.cider.mx/cider/usage/misc_features.html#browsing-the-clojure-spec-registry

I also know of misc professional projects that use Spec 2.

Perhaps a matrix trimming might be welcome (as long as that work isn't burdensome to you), otherwise I haven't observed a practical problem.

Worth noting, we always encourage running make test as the standard command across projects, so we shouldn't be too concerned about what's inside.

[alexander-yakushev]

I also know of misc professional projects that use Spec 2.

😱

It's just a bit annoying having to do a special dance for a single library that never left alpha to ensure that the only one unit test written for it works.

[vemv]

Some low-hanging fruit is that if locally one runs make test twice, one is cleaning twice so the clone will be performed twice.

[vemv]

We also could use lein-git-down, it's a "xs" task, can do for you if you consider things painful locally

(Personally I don't)