Using 'def with metadata {:type :anything} throws ClassCastException during printing

On the other hand, the :default print-method probably should be more robust. I think a check for (instance? clojure.lang.IObj o) before calling vary-meta would be appropriate. Added a patch that calls print-simple if the o isn't an IObj. That works around the issue for Var, and seems reasonable for other exotic types. The only downside I can imagine is if someone had a custom print-method but accidentally had a typo in their :type metadata, they will no longer get an error. This was an edge case to begin with so that probably doesn't matter.

The :type metadata is used internally by Clojure. For the situation in this bug report, you have to take responsibility for providing a print-method if you put :type metatdata on your var.

This is not a good example, but it shows one way to work around the bug:

This is caused by the printer dispatch function

which ends up calling the default dispatch, which tries to vary-meta.