Contributing to Datahike

August 30, 2026 ยท View on GitHub

The current process requires having babashka installed.

An overview of the available tasks will be shown with

bb tasks

Compile Java classes

bb compile

Run the tests

Unittests

# Persistent sorted set index (fast)

bb test pss
#or 
bb test pss --watch

# Hitchhiker-tree index (slow)

bb test hht

Integration tests (Docker needed)

bb test integration

Backward-compatibility test

bb test back-compat

Native-image test (native-image needed)

bb test native-image

Start the benchmarks

bb bench

Build a Datahike jar

bb jar

Install Datahike to local maven repository

bb install

Format

Check the formatting:

bb format

or fix the formatting:

bb ffix

Release Datahike

Deploying Datahike to Clojars manually

Manually

Should only be done in case of emergency First you have to build the artifact with bb jar, then you need to set CLOJARS_USERNAME and CLOJARS_PASSWORD as environment variables, then you can run bb deploy to deploy the artifact to Clojars.

Pipeline

Datahike is released everytime there is a commit to the main branch. We are using semantic versioning and the patch-version is the number of commits on the main branch. That means it is always increasing, even if the major or minor version is increased.

CircleCI

Clojars needs to be stored as an environment variable on CircleCI. There needs to be a variable CLOJARS_USERNAME set to your Clojars username and a variable CLOJARS_PASSWORD set to the token that permits to deploy on clojars.

In order to create new releases on GitHub we need environment variables on CircleCI. The two variables GITHUB_TOKEN and GITHUB_USER need to be set in a context called github-token in the CircleCI UI for the organisation.

Git tags and GitHub releases

Each merge to main creates a draft release on GitHub and a git tag to point to the merge commit made when merging a branch into main. The jar is appended to the Github-release.

The published release event also builds ghcr.io/replikativ/datahike-server from that release's standalone server JAR. GitHub Actions authenticates to GHCR with its repository-scoped GITHUB_TOKEN; no Docker Hub account or additional registry secret is required. The workflow requests packages: write itself. After the package is created for the first time, an organization owner should verify that it is linked to this repository and set its package visibility to public. Subsequent version, minor, and latest tags are automatic.

The release process step by step

  • Set a new version in build.clj if you want to release a new minor or major version. For the ordinary patch release you can let the CI automatically increment the patch release version.
  • Squash and rebase if you see a need to.
  • Create the PR against the main branch.
  • Once approved, merge the PR into main.
    • a new release on Clojars will be created.
    • a new draft release will be created on GitHub.
  • Go to GitHub and
    • fill in release notes
    • release the draft Release.