support for vertically aligning values in a let (align-cljlet)

[uvtc]

Would be nice if Emacs could help me turn this:

(let [thing "stuff"
      other-thing "other stuff"]
  ...)

into

(let [thing       "stuff"
      other-thing "other stuff"]
  ...)

This came up at bbatsov/clojure-style-guide#10 , and samaaron mentioned there's already a mode that does this: https://github.com/gstamp/align-cljlet .

Is align-cljlet something that could be integrated into clojure-mode?

[technomancy]

I strongly disagree that this should be the canonical recommended style, but I don't have a problem adding this functionality to clojure-mode if it can be done cleanly.

[uvtc]

I strongly disagree that this should be the canonical recommended style,

Just curious: why wouldn't you recommend this style? One possible problem I could imagine is, for those who use tabs rather than spaces, it could cause a mess.

[technomancy]

People are going to be editing Clojure files in editors that don't have this feature implemented, and telling them they can't write idiomatic code without manually counting out their spaces until things line up just isn't fair.

It's not that I recommend against doing it; just that I recommend against a blanket statement that everyone should do it.

[bbatsov]

I'm with @technomancy on this.

[ska2342]

While I agree that this should not be considered the true idiomatic style, I use that style sometimes and would love to get some support. My favorite would be an integration with align (from align.el) which I used to use a lot when doing perl stuff.

Does closing this issue mean, we'll not tackle this?

[bbatsov]

I'd consider for inclusion a simple solution to the problem, but nothing nearly as complex as the code in align-cljlet. This feature isn't something I'd ever use, so someone else should develop it.

[dijonkitchen]

For posterity, this exists now: https://github.com/clojure-emacs/clojure-mode#vertical-alignment