I think you are misunderstanding. People have shown in this thread that they have a slightly different workflow from each other, but my point was that Clojure(Script) points you towards a particular type of workflow, one that I do not like. What I essentially want is 1 of three things:
1) Fast builds so I can set up an auto-build script.
2) A Leinengen daemon so I don't have to worry about building at all.
3) ClojureScript so I can just refresh the browser.
As far as I can tell none of these are possible. If I am wrong please correct me.
You can certainly get all of that stuff (except fast builds in some particular circumstances).
My project I described before is a web app, and my workflow involves my editor, a browser, a clojure repl, a clojurescript browser repl that runs code in the browser and a shell script that runs the various watchers I described before.
If I change any clojure file the browser refreshes automatically (and my tests run automatically).
If I change any clojurescript file it gets rebuilt automatically and the js file is reloaded in the browser (just the js, not a full page refresh)
If I change any sass file, it gets rebuild and the css in the browser refreshes (just the css)
If I change any html template then, depending on the template, either the page is refreshed or my clojurescript is rebuilt and the js refreshed.
So all those things are possible (I saw a cool post the other day of some ring middleware to handle using clojurescript inside <script> tags transparently).
The non-clojure stuff is handled completely outside of the clojure ecosystem, I was using LiveReload and Guard when doing python dev to get that partial refresh on file save functionality and it was pretty simple to hook clojure into that same workflow.
I will say that if you are doing a lot of compile time template processing in your clojurescript like I am (using Kioo/Om/React.js) then the compile time for the clojurescript can be a little long, but since I have a browser REPL I do my experimental stuff in there instead of hitting that recompile cycle frequently so it's only a minor imperfection in practice.
So I definitely don't worry about building at all, and I don't even have to refresh my browser thanks to LiveReload - I just have to hit save in my editor.
There unfortunately aren't a lot of tutorials for setting this kind of thing up. I've got a start on writing up my setup and will put the project skeleton on github soon-ish ... I have this damn real work that keeps getting in the way.
1) Fast builds so I can set up an auto-build script.
2) A Leinengen daemon so I don't have to worry about building at all.
3) ClojureScript so I can just refresh the browser.
As far as I can tell none of these are possible. If I am wrong please correct me.