Haskell Editor / IDE Setup

Technologies used

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Progress Tracking

Contributors

This project exists thanks to all the people who contribute. [Contribute].

Automated: Haskell Editor Setup GUI program

Work on creating a Haskell Editor Setup GUI program is in process, you can track progress here: HES Project Kanban

How Haskell Editor Setup will work - One click install:

1. (optional) choose which to install: GHC, cabal, stack, nix, git, hie
2. (optional) choose which editors / IDEs to install
3. (optional) choose which editor / IDE extensions to install
4. Click Configure button and your system will be configured to have installed / set up all the things you chose. If all of them are defaults you will get everything recommended: editor, extensions etc.

The goal of this software is mainly to allow easy editor / IDE setup for whoever tries Haskell for the first time.

Usefulness and features of the project

• One Click Install for recommended Atom and recommended extensions for it
• Two Click Install for picking your editor and recommended extensions for it
• customizable settings that persist across runs
• notify via: sounds, toast messages, etc. so that you know when system was updated
• hours saved by using this project: in the order of millions
• great UX for new Haskell learners mainly because of One Click Configuration of Atom, which is a great editor for Haskell code

"Everything that can be automated should be automated" - Future Robot Overlords

Implementation progress for Atom editor:

Donations

You can donate to support work on Haskell Editor Setup using: https://opencollective.com/fairy-tale-agi-solutions

All the incoming and outgoing expenses for the organization can be seen at the page above.

The donation money will be used for funding the payment for the bounties for tickets on this project.

Bounties

A bounty is a sum of money which will be rewarded on successful completion of an issue.

The bounty issues are marked with bounty label and will contain in the issue title the bounty award.

After your PR has been merged to claim a bounty reward, submit an expense using the OpenCollective link above and mention:

1. Haskell Editor Setup Bounty for expense name
2. issue number and title in the line item description

Very important is to attach an invoice to the expense. Send me an email at [email protected] and I will give you the details you need to fill in the invoice. Make sure to specify in the email for which pull request the invoice is. Use an invoice generator for example to create the invoice. Make sure you are following all the laws in your country regarding emitting invoices.

I will start by paying developers the following amounts for their work on issues:

• 5 Euro for first 1 hour task they would work on
• 3 Euro for successive 1 hour task they would work on
• 1.5 Euro per hour for all other cases
• for special cases I can pay bigger bounties, this depends on the person taking the task, the task, etc.

At the beginning the payments will be mainly symbolic for the developed countries yet better than average pay for non-developed ones.

Important note: Because of transfer fees and VAT it is probable that the sum received will be smaller than the one specified in the ticket.

Over time as this project becomes more successful and money starts flowing in through donations we will increase the pay / hour to further accelerate the pace of progress and make bounties more attractive for everyone.

Manual instructions for setting up Haskell editors / IDE

HIE together with compatible plugins usually offers more features than the average Haskell multi-feature plugin + compatible plugins. Some exceptions are: IntelliJ IDEA which has a very good set of features (and HIE does not have an IDEA plugin yet) and Leksah (which also does not have a HIE plugin but offers quite a lot of features itself).

To see a list of Haskell IDE Engine features see: HIE features

For a list of editor / IDE features see: rainbyte/haskell-ide-chart

Choose your operating system and continue the steps required for it:

• Windows
• Windows using WSL
• Windows using VMWare with Linux virtual machine
• Linux
• MacOS

Windows

Install Git

• download Git from here
• install it

Enable Win32 long paths

On Windows Professional

• Type Windows key, type gpedit.msc and press Enter.
• Navigate to Local Computer Policy > Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > System > Filesystem
• Double click on Enable Win32 long paths
• Click on Enabled
• Click on OK
• Close Local Group Policy Editor
• Reboot your operating system

On Windows Home or Starter

• Open the registry patch file
• Right click in the opened registry file and click on Save as... and save it with extension .reg
• Double click it and choose Yes
• Reboot your operating system

Install the Haskell Tool Stack

• download Haskell Stack installer
• install Haskell Stack through the installer, the default settings should be fine

Install Haskell IDE Engine

• press Win+E
• open the root of one of your drives where you want to clone Haskell IDE Engine
• right click in the folder and click on Git Bash Here
• clone Haskell IDE Engine with: git clone https://github.com/haskell/haskell-ide-engine.git
• run cd haskell-ide-engine
• run stack ./install.hs hie-8.6.5 asynchronously (go graba cup of coffee, or do something else while it installs, etc. - it will take a while, took 44m 43s for me)
• run stack ./install.hs data

Continue with installing the editor / IDE of your choice

Install Nix on your operating system

Nix is a package manager that is very good at doing successful installs.

If you require any system level libraries to use in the project you are working on it is recommended to use Nix to provide them and then do your development inside a nix-shell.

Doing Haskell development on Windows is not recommended since many Haskell packages have issues building on Windows. For doing development while using Widnows as your OS the recommended options are to use either a VMWare virtual machine (preferred) or Windows Subsystem for Linux (unrecommended since the build times are much slower).

Developing on Linux or MacOS should work fine.

To install Nix in your OS run:

curl https://nixos.org/nix/install | sh

Install GHC and cabal-install

Create the file ~/.config/nixpkgs/config.nix and copy paste this into it:

with import <nixpkgs> {};

{
  allowUnfree = true;

  packageOverrides = pkgs: rec {
    all = pkgs.buildEnv {
      name = "all";

      paths = [
        haskell.compiler.ghc865
        haskellPackages.cabal-install
        binutils.bintools # required on WSL
      ];
    };
  };
}

And run following command to install the GHC and cabal-install packages:

nix-env -i all

Install the editor / IDE of your choice

Editors that are easy to set up are Atom, Visual Studio Code, IntelliJ IDEA Community or Sublime Text 3.

Editors / IDEs list and their Nix package name:

• Atom - atom
• Visual Studio Code - vscode
• Emacs - emacs
• Spacemacs - emacs (and then install the spacemacs layer)
• Neovim - neovim
• Vim - vim
• Leksah - install instructions
• IntelliJ IDEA Community - jetbrains.idea-community
• Sublime Text 3 - sublime3

To install:

• pick your editor(s) from the list above
• add the editor(s) Nix package name(s) to the packages list inside ~/.nixpkgs/config.nix
• run nix-env -i all to install the editors you chose

Continue with:

• using Atom, VSCode, Emacs, Spacemacs, Neovim, Vim or Sublime Text 3
• using IntelliJ IDEA Community
• using Leksah

Install Haskell IDE Engine executable

In ~/.config/nixpkgs/config.nix add to the let variables:

all-hies = import (fetchTarball "https://github.com/infinisil/all-hies/tarball/master") {};

and add following to the list of packages - change the GHC list to the ones you will want to have available (eg. ghc865 or ghc865 ghc864 ghc843):

(all-hies.selection { selector = p: { inherit (p) ghc865; }; })

if you wish to install HIE for all GHC versions because you switch between projects with different GHC versions a lot then you can use this instead:

(all-hies.selection { selector = p: p; })

installing all HIE versions will take a long time to install

after adding HIE your configuration should look something like the following:

with import <nixpkgs> {};

let
  all-hies = import (fetchTarball "https://github.com/infinisil/all-hies/tarball/master") {};
  unstable = import <nixpkgs> { inherit config; };
in
  {
    allowUnfree = true;

    packageOverrides = pkgs: rec {
      all = pkgs.buildEnv {
        name = "all";

        paths = [
          binutils.bintools # required on WSL
          haskell.compiler.ghc865
          haskellPackages.cabal-install
          unstable.haskellPackages.stack
          unstable.haskellPackages.cabal2nix
          haskellPackages.hoogle
          haskellPackages.ghcid
          (all-hies.selection { selector = p: { inherit (p) ghc865; }; })
        ];
      };
    };
  }

run nix-env -i all to install HIE

Install the extensions for your editor / IDE that help with Haskell development

Atom (setup difficulty trivial)

• nix
• language-haskell
• atom-ide-ui
• ide-haskell-hie (Haskell IDE Engine)
• ide-haskell-repl
• autocomplete-haskell
• hasklig
• ide-haskell-hoogle
• ide-haskell-cabal
• ide-haskell-hasktags

Visual Studio Code (VSCode) (setup difficulty trivial)

• Nix
• Haskell Syntax Highlighting
• Haskell Language Server (Haskell IDE Engine)
• haskell-ghcid
• hoogle-vscode
• Hasklig - ligatures for Haskell code

Installing Hasklig fonts on Windows:

• press Win+X
• press A to start cmd as administrator
• run @"%SystemRoot%\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe" -NoProfile -InputFormat None -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Command "iex ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))" && SET "PATH=%PATH%;%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\chocolatey\bin" to install the package manager Chocolatey
• run choco install hasklig to install the Hasklig fonts on your operating system

Enabling Hasklig fonts:

• open Visual Studio Code

• type Ctrl+Shift+P

• type setting

• open Preferences: Open Settings (JSON)

• make sure you have the following in your settings:

  • "editor.fontFamily": "Hasklig"
  • "editor.fontLigatures": true

Alternatives to HIE:

• Haskelly
• Haskero
• Simple GHC

Emacs (setup difficulty hard)

• emacs-lsp/lsp-haskell (Haskell IDE Engine)
• emacs-lsp/lsp-ui
• emacs-lsp/lsp-mode

Alternatives to HIE:

• jyp/dante (intero fork)
• chrisdone/intero
• flycheck/flycheck-haskell
• haskell/haskell-mode
• nominolo/scion
• DanielG/ghc-mod

Spacemacs

• emacs-lsp/lsp-haskell (Haskell IDE Engine)
• haskell/haskell-mode

Alternatives to HIE:

• Haskell layer (uses intero)

Neovim (setup difficulty hard)

• neovimhaskell/haskell-vim
• neoclide/coc.nvim
• autozimu/LanguageClient-neovim (Haskell IDE Engine)

Alternatives to HIE:

• chrisdone/intero
• parsonsmatt/intero-neovim

Vim (setup difficulty hard)

• neovimhaskell/haskell-vim
• neoclide/coc.nvim
• autozimu/LanguageClient-neovim (Haskell IDE Engine)

Alternatives to HIE:

• vim-syntastic/syntastic
• dense-analysis/ale

Leksah (setup difficulty hard)

IntelliJ IDEA Community (setup difficulty easy)

• IntelliJ-Haskell
• HaskForce
• HoogleIt

Sublime Text 3 (setup difficulty normal)

• LSP (Haskell IDE Engine)

Alternatives to HIE:

• SublimeHaskell
• dariusf/sublime-intero