Spawning child processes returns invalid argument

2
votes

I have a class this semester that requires a lisp dialect so I'm trying to get started with Clojure but I'm running into a lot of problems setting up my environment.

I'm on a Windows machine and am following the tutorial at http://www.braveclojure.com/basic-emacs/ to set up emacs which from my research seems like the best IDE for working with lisp. I had Cygwin installed before starting which supposedly has a lot of support for emacs but I'm not sure if I need to do more than just have it installed.

My problems is when I try to start a REPL in emacs with M-x cider-jack-in I get the response Spawning child process: invalid argument. If I do the M-x load-path command I get a list of every subfolder in my .emacs.d folder but not the .d folder itself but the folder where my cider package is installed is clearly listed.

I installed lein before I decided to try setting up emacs and I could open a REPL just fine with it but emacs seems like a much better way of working than just using the terminal.

Any advice is greatly appreciated but if there is a better/easier way to get started with Clojure on Windows than what I'm currently doing I'd love to hear about it.

Thanks in advance for any replies.

2
emacsclojurecider
Try NightCode or LightTable. Either of these is a good way to start using Clojure. These and other resources are mentioned here. – Thumbnail

2 Answers

1
votes

Yes, emacs is great, but if you haven't worked with it before then you will have a very steep learning curve, exacerbated by the fact you are running Windows. I myself use emacs with CIDER a lot, and I also use emacs on Windows quite a bit, but I don't mix it - I use emacs/CIDER only on Linux. It doesn't mean at all that it can't be made to work on Windows, it's just it has a lot of complexity of its own, which you might not have time or inclination to deal with right now. (By the way, I wouldn't recommend using emacs under Cygwin [1] , use a good native build instead. And if you still decide to go with emacs, by all means try Prelude - it comes from the author of CIDER by the way.)

If you want an option that is definitely smoother under the circumstances, download IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition and install Cursive. That will have its own learning curve for sure, but give it a try and see what you prefer. I use both, nothing beats IntelliJ/Cursive in Java interop projects.

Both emacs/CIDER and IntelliJ/Cursive are terrific and will repay for deeper learning.

[1] I am not even sure a combination of emacs on Cygwin and lein/clojure on Win32 can work, but I have no environment to test.