ClojureScript forks Google Closure to guarantee backward compatibility

https://news.ycombinator.com/rss Hits: 6
Summary

The incredible stability of Google Closure Library started declining around 2019. Google was both trying many things with respect to their internal JavaScript strategy as well becoming less concerned about the impact on outside consumers. Finally, Google stopped contributing to Google Closure Library last August. We have forked Google Closure Library (GCL) and taken up maintenance. We backed out a few years of needless breaking changes and aligned the codebase with the latest Google Closure Compiler release. One of the biggest benefits of GCL is that it makes ClojureScript a complete solution for a variety of JavaScript contexts, not limited to the browser. Taking on additional dependencies always comes with a cost. One of ClojureScript’s original value propositions was a rock solid set of readily available JavaScript tools as dependable as clojure.core. We are working on restoring that original stability. With this release, you’ll find that quite a few old ClojureScript libraries work again today as well as they did 14 years ago. ClojureScript is not and never was only just for rich web applications. Even in the post React-world, a large portion of the web is (sensibly) still using jQuery. If you need robust DOM manipulation, internationalization, date/time handling, color value manipulation, mathematics, programmatic animation, browser history management, accessibility support, graphics, and much more, all without committing to a framework and without bloating your final JavaScript artifact - ClojureScript is a one stop shop.

First seen: 2025-05-16 21:45

Last seen: 2025-05-17 02:45