Welcome Haskell Mode users,

Haskell Mode progress report for October 2015. It is also available online and on reddit. 

For previous issue see September 2015.

What is Haskell Mode?

Haskell Mode is an umbrella project for multiple Emacs tools for efficient Haskell development. Haskell Mode is an open source project developed by a group of volunteers. For more information see https://github.com/haskell/haskell-mode.

Important developments

Functionality provided by haskell-indentation received a lot of fixes and contributions lifting it to a complete new level of quality. haskell-indentation is now a default indentation mode enabled when haskell-mode itself is enabled.

ATTENTION TUTORIAL WRITERS: The following line is NO LONGER NEEDED:

   (add-hook 'haskell-mode-hook 'haskell-indentation-mode)

PLEASE REMOVE IT FROM ALL THE TUTORIALS OUT THERE. Thanks.

Note that for backward compatibility all other indentation modes know how to properly handle new defaults.

We have also improved our development process by defining Complete functionality as a concept.

Cooperation with related projects

As noted last time Haskell Mode wanted to reach out to other projects in editor space. This has not happened because even better events unfolded. Things of note:

haskell-ide-(backend) project got started by Alan Zimmerman. The goal is to bring in all the backend tools that editors need to properly handle advanced Haskell editing.

ghc-mod does not need to be introduced. We are thinking how to better split work between haskell-mode and ghc-mod.

HaRe is a Haskell refactorer. It can rename all the one letter variables to something more descriptive! It can also do other things. And it has somewhat working Emacs integration.

Heads up tutorial writers!

There are plenty tutorials out there how to setup haskell-mode. Thanks for writing those! Note that some of them are quite outdated at this point in time and a bit confusing due to the improvements in haskell-mode. Can I ask tutorial writers to contribute directly to haskell mode documentation so that Haskell Mode Manual can be kept up to date with haskell-mode developments?

Please contribute documentation back to the project. External tutorials get out of hand pretty fast. Thanks

Heads up! Cruft removal!

haskell-mode is about to loose some weight so that it can be better carried by Haskell Mode Community. On the list to be removed are:

If you use one of the above yourself, feel strongly that it should be supported by the community and volunteer to write some unit tests and documentation, please speak up!

The changes above will be merged no earlier than December 2015 so there is time to chime in.

Current project focus

Current project focus is to lower entry barrier for newcomers by defining bite-sized tasks.

Get 50 'well-defined-tasks' done as by the metric:

https://github.com/haskell/haskell-mode/issues?q=is%3Aissue+label%3Awell-defined-task+is%3Aclosed

A 'well-defined-task' is a category of tasks that have the field cleared for them, questions already sorted out and detailed information how to get them done. So you can just sit, search for 'well-defined-task' label and enjoy the coding! The point is to lower the entry barrier for new users, new issue reporters and advanced programmers but Emacs lisp beginners to contribute to the project.

Current status: 13 well-defined-tasks closed plus 13 more open.

If only you can help with reaching our targets please do so!

Issues closed in October

  • Disable Indentation #90
  • Unicode symbols inside ghci prompt hang inferior-haskell-mode #176
  • Multi-line -ferror-spans syntax not supported #192
  • [Discussion] Add end-to-end guide for configuring haskell-mode in a place where users will see it #197
  • Sorting imported functions from a module alphabetically #206
  • After the newline have to hit twice to start cycling #276
  • indent-according-to-mode opens the help buffer for haskell-mode-hook #290
  • Can't get type info unless file compiles #294
  • Parsing broken on quasi quotes #323
  • getLine behaves not correctly in Interactive-Haskell-mode. #333
  • Overly aggressive indenting after recent Emacs update #377
  • haskell-indentation-mode parse error on indenting import declaration #397
  • Pick one indentation mode as preferred in the documentation/customize. #414
  • haskell-indendation and guards #481
  • Running indent-according-to-mode moves the cursor way to the right #488
  • haskell-session-change-target should list available targets #534
  • Haskell-mode crashing and buffer erased (not sure exactly where problem is) #594
  • haskell-indentation breaks with UnicodeSyntax #715
  • Handle Template Haskell / DataKinds names in haskell-indentation #760
  • No indentation suggested for case clauses #786
  • Pull in ghc-mod's ghc-make-indent-shallower/deeper into haskell-mode #826
  • Clean up example init.el on wiki #843
  • Indentation mode needs to be able to recover from parser errors #861
  • haskell-simple-indent-mode non-responsive #867
  • Get hit by 'Invalid Token := )' #875
  • Invalid Token :| #878
  • Parse error: Illegal token: where #883
  • parse-error "Expecting then" "Expecting else" DoAndIfThenElse in indentation #884
  • Illegal tokens and QuasiQuotes #894
  • Haskell Interactive Shell Stuck in Insert Mode (spacemacs) #895
  • Syntax highlighting: no difference between data constructor and type ? #898
  • Let the enter create a new line despite the indentation errors #905
  • Parse Error inside QuasiQuotes #907
  • "Expecting else" error message #917
  • Support commas in first indentation column #918
  • haskell-process changes the directory which causes loaded modules to be unloaded #923
  • Syntax highlighting only #924
  • haskell-process.el binds C-c c but should not #926
  • Simple indent vs haskell-indentation when using autofill on comments #932
  • How to use REPL with stack? #953
  • Wiki documentation out of sync ? #968 ### Pull requests merged in October
  • Support where keyword after any expression #897
  • Support names starting with quotes #903
  • Fix switching to the presentation buffer #904
  • Implement QuasiQuotes syntax in indentation #909
  • Add build notification to #haskell-emacs #912
  • Mobile friendly README.md #913
  • Add failing tests for indentation #916
  • Toplevel indentation bugfixes for data, newtype, instance #919
  • Document failing indentation #920
  • Navigate to top level declaration in indenatation #921
  • Make haskell indentation the default indentation mode #922
  • Don't change directory when using stack-ghci. #925
  • Add rather baroque indentation test which cause parse failure #927
  • Yet another parser failure #928
  • Reloading: haskell-process-file-loadish needs the current buffer as an argument #929
  • Fix nested layout 1 #930
  • Filter only sections bearing targets - fixes #534 #931
  • Honour curly braces in target sections #933
  • Add failing tests for multiline string literals #934
  • Mark some indentation tests as passing #936
  • Remove useless debugging functions #937
  • Write tests properly, mark them as passing #944
  • Remove auto-fill code from indentation #945
  • Improve can grab prefix for completions #946
  • Remove dynamic indentation showing #947
  • Indentation of guards with commas is working properly #948
  • Fix indent for do inside a list #956
  • Recognize top level constructs in indentation #965
  • Remove indentation safety hack #966
  • Change 'w.r.t' to 'with regards to' for clarity #967

Contributors active in October

Alexey Khudyakov, Chris Done, Gracjan Polak, Gregor Riegler, Kabelo Moiloa, Marlo Major, vlatkoB

Contributing

Haskell Mode needs volunteers like any other open source project. For more information see:

https://github.com/haskell/haskell-mode/wiki

Also drop by our IRC channel: #haskell-emacs at irc.freenode.net.

Thanks!