Haskell Editor / IDE Setup

Notes on 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 works:

choose which to install: GHC, cabal, stack, nix, git, hie
choose which editors / IDEs to install
choose which editor / IDE extensions to install
press a button and your system will be updated to have installed / set up all the things you selected

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

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

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