Welcome Haskell IDE Engine (future) users, [also available online at https://github.com/haskell/haskell-ide-engine/blob/master/docs/Report-2015-1...] Haskell IDE Engine progress report for December 2015. What is Haskell IDE Engine? Not an IDE, still no release, it is a work in progress. It is a common point to join together the effort of integrating tools into an IDE and the effort of writing tools for an IDE, by providing an API in the middle that each of these parties can work from and to. Important developments This month has been mostly about turning ideas into practice, and dealing with the details that come out when things become concrete. The more concrete things we have are: 1. Auto-generated API documentation (@cocreature) One of the principles of HIE is that each plugin/command provides a PluginDescriptor documenting the commands it provides, parameters they take and return types. Moritz Kiefer has created a module[1] to take this information and generate API documentation[2]. The information is present, but help with styling / presentation will be gladly accepted. [1] https://github.com/haskell/haskell-ide-engine/tree/master/hie-docs-generator [2] https://haskell.github.io/haskell-ide-engine/ 2. Leksah context menu (@jpmoresmau) JP Moresmau has extended the Leksah integration[3][4] to now provide a context-specific menu providing available HIE commands. This includes the ability to invoke HaRe to do refactorings. To enable this we now have a specific hie-base[5] module with just the basic types which can be included in the IDE side if it is fortunate enough to use haskell. [3] https://github.com/JPMoresmau/leksah/tree/hie_integration [4] https://github.com/JPMoresmau/leksah-server/tree/hie_integration [5] https://github.com/haskell/haskell-ide-engine/tree/master/hie-base 3. Deeper Emacs integration (@cocreature) The Emacs integration uses the PluginDescriptor to generate a set of elisp functions corresponding to each plugin command. The macro generating these has been extended to populate the docstrings for these. It also handles the HieDiff return type which means it can apply the changes from a HaRe refactoring, or any other plugin generating a diff. It prompts interactively for any additional parameters required. 4. New plugins applyrefact is a wrapper around Matthew Pickering's library to apply hlint changes to source code. egasync is an example wrapper showing how a plugin can launch its own process in the server and stream output from it back to the IDE, if the transport used supports this. Otherwise the transport will batch it up when a request is received for the output. Current project focus The current project focus is still on getting our collective heads straight on what actually needs to be done, and providing working integrations to at least 2 IDEs to get a better feel for what is needed. Both of these are well in hand, and if anyone would like to join in the discussion happens via the github issue tracker and docs section of the project, as well as IRC at #haskell-ide-engine on freenode. Issues closed in December Decide on matching an existing IDE protocol or designing a new one #2 Representation of arbitrary types for a plugin #14 Plugin function definition #16 Add QuickCheck tests for FromJSON / ToJSON instances #48 Check PluginDescriptor on loading #52 Add a signal handler to flush logs on exit #58 Plugin startup / private data #83 Create a diff type #95 Replace logging package #112 Split between haskell-ide-engine and haskell-plugin-api #118 Document existance of module-management package and ghc-vis #124 Provide ghc-modi transport? #125 Sort out ghc-mod session management #127 Git integration #128 apply-refact plugin #131 emacs: how to run hie with arguments / logging #134 Change HieDiff to represent a standard patch format #138 Pull requests merged in December Detect plugin param name collisions #115 Bring in a diff type, and introduce semantic types #116 New logger #120 Rework api split #122 (elisp) Add log of hie process input / output #123 Ghc mod session #130 Apply refact plugin #133 Ghc mod find #135 Plugin state #137 Change HieDiff to use a patch format #139 Hare context #141 Initial example async process plugin #143 Base split #144 Support more commands #145 Add tests for hie-create-command #146 Add integration test for hie-hare-rename #147 Move to a plugin/command url scheme #148 Documentation generator #149 Contributors active in December Alan Zimmerman, Daniel Gröber, JP Moresmau, Michael Sloan, Moritz Kiefer, Tobias G. Waaler Contributing Haskell IDE Engine needs volunteers like any other open source project. For more information see: https://github.com/haskell/haskell-ide-engine Also drop by our IRC channel: #haskell-ide-engine at irc.freenode.net. Thanks!