Current state-of-the-art in getting a dev env set up (windows 8)

What is the current advice for getting a haskell dev env set up on windows? There's a lot of options, and it can be hard to quickly determine which are current and which are deprecated/bit-rotted. For example, apparently cabal sandbox is preferred over cabal-dev these days. I've read: http://onoffswitch.net/started-haskell/ http://stackoverflow.com/questions/304614/haskell-on-windows-setup http://coldwa.st/e/blog/2013-08-20-Cabal-sandbox.html http://bob.ippoli.to/archives/2013/01/11/getting-started-with-haskell/ I've installed the latest haskell platform (2014.2), and am using Sublime Text 2 as my editor. SublimeHaskell is installed, but apparently it needs aeson, haskell-src-ext, and haddock. cabal install aeson indicates that it will break unordered-containers-0.2.4.0 and case-insensitive-1.1.0.3, so I must use --force-reinstalls to get it. I'm doing this in a sandbox, in case it is a terrible idea. https://github.com/SublimeHaskell/SublimeHaskell Not yet sure how I'm going to get the sandbox install of these tools to work with SublimeHaskell. Presumably some PATH magic? hdevtools looks cool and seems like it can be used from SublimeHaskell, although a windows install is from a fork. Will install ghc-mod too. What else am I missing? Thanks, Alistair

This is a question I am often asking myself as well. Here are a few points:
1. definitely install MSYS2
see links here http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Windows
2. I used Sublime Text 2 as well, switched to 3 now and it works great so
far
3. Yes, installing the dev tools is a pain on Windows. It almost never just
works. I install dev tools into the user space and always use sandboxes for
projects. Currently I managed to install the following versions. You have
to use these specific versions.
aeson-0.7.0.6
ghc-mod-4.1.6
haddock-2.14.3
haskell-docs-4.2.2
haskell-src-exts-1.15.0.1
hasktags-0.69.0
hlint-1.9.4
I could never get codex to work on Windows with Haskell Platform.
4. I also recommend ghc-vis package, which only today I managed to
successfully install:
http://felsin9.de/nnis/ghc-vis/installing-windows/
-- do not use `--enable-shared` in the last command
ghc-heap-view-0.5.3
ghc-vis-0.7.2.5
5. with hdevtools, you have to get the windows fork and pull one of the
branches which makes it work with GHC-7.8.3 (I forgot exactly which one I
pulled from). The fork is not maintained. I am hoping that `ghc-modi` will
eventually replace `hdevtools` for SublimeHaskell.
Hope that helps to get you going. On Linux everything just works when you
get GHC and cabal-install.
Cheers,
Michal
On Thu, Oct 9, 2014 at 9:15 PM, Alistair Bayley
What is the current advice for getting a haskell dev env set up on windows? There's a lot of options, and it can be hard to quickly determine which are current and which are deprecated/bit-rotted.
For example, apparently cabal sandbox is preferred over cabal-dev these days.
I've read: http://onoffswitch.net/started-haskell/ http://stackoverflow.com/questions/304614/haskell-on-windows-setup http://coldwa.st/e/blog/2013-08-20-Cabal-sandbox.html http://bob.ippoli.to/archives/2013/01/11/getting-started-with-haskell/
I've installed the latest haskell platform (2014.2), and am using Sublime Text 2 as my editor. SublimeHaskell is installed, but apparently it needs aeson, haskell-src-ext, and haddock. cabal install aeson indicates that it will break unordered-containers-0.2.4.0 and case-insensitive-1.1.0.3, so I must use --force-reinstalls to get it. I'm doing this in a sandbox, in case it is a terrible idea.
https://github.com/SublimeHaskell/SublimeHaskell
Not yet sure how I'm going to get the sandbox install of these tools to work with SublimeHaskell. Presumably some PATH magic?
hdevtools looks cool and seems like it can be used from SublimeHaskell, although a windows install is from a fork. Will install ghc-mod too.
What else am I missing?
Thanks, Alistair
_______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe

Ah, forgot to add that you have to fix the PATH. By default, the platform
installer creates a user variable PATH, which windows 8 automatically
appends at the end of the system PATH. This way doing `cabal install
cabal-install` will update cabal in user space but the platform one will
always be used. So you must "prepend" the path to
`c:\users\....\AppData\Roaming\cabal\bin` at the beginning of the system
PATH to give user space executables priority over platform and global
executables.
In MSYS, get friendly with `hash -r` command when you fiddle with PATHs.
Michal
On Thu, Oct 9, 2014 at 9:57 PM, Michal Antkiewicz wrote: This is a question I am often asking myself as well. Here are a few points: 1. definitely install MSYS2
see links here http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Windows 2. I used Sublime Text 2 as well, switched to 3 now and it works great so
far 3. Yes, installing the dev tools is a pain on Windows. It almost never
just works. I install dev tools into the user space and always use
sandboxes for projects. Currently I managed to install the following
versions. You have to use these specific versions. aeson-0.7.0.6
ghc-mod-4.1.6
haddock-2.14.3
haskell-docs-4.2.2
haskell-src-exts-1.15.0.1
hasktags-0.69.0
hlint-1.9.4 I could never get codex to work on Windows with Haskell Platform. 4. I also recommend ghc-vis package, which only today I managed to
successfully install:
http://felsin9.de/nnis/ghc-vis/installing-windows/
-- do not use `--enable-shared` in the last command ghc-heap-view-0.5.3
ghc-vis-0.7.2.5 5. with hdevtools, you have to get the windows fork and pull one of the
branches which makes it work with GHC-7.8.3 (I forgot exactly which one I
pulled from). The fork is not maintained. I am hoping that `ghc-modi` will
eventually replace `hdevtools` for SublimeHaskell. Hope that helps to get you going. On Linux everything just works when you
get GHC and cabal-install. Cheers,
Michal On Thu, Oct 9, 2014 at 9:15 PM, Alistair Bayley What is the current advice for getting a haskell dev env set up on
windows? There's a lot of options, and it can be hard to quickly determine
which are current and which are deprecated/bit-rotted. For example, apparently cabal sandbox is preferred over cabal-dev these
days. I've read:
http://onoffswitch.net/started-haskell/
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/304614/haskell-on-windows-setup
http://coldwa.st/e/blog/2013-08-20-Cabal-sandbox.html
http://bob.ippoli.to/archives/2013/01/11/getting-started-with-haskell/ I've installed the latest haskell platform (2014.2), and am using Sublime
Text 2 as my editor. SublimeHaskell is installed, but apparently it needs
aeson, haskell-src-ext, and haddock. cabal install aeson indicates that it
will break unordered-containers-0.2.4.0 and case-insensitive-1.1.0.3, so I
must use --force-reinstalls to get it. I'm doing this in a sandbox, in case
it is a terrible idea. https://github.com/SublimeHaskell/SublimeHaskell Not yet sure how I'm going to get the sandbox install of these tools to
work with SublimeHaskell. Presumably some PATH magic? hdevtools looks cool and seems like it can be used from SublimeHaskell,
although a windows install is from a fork. Will install ghc-mod too. What else am I missing? Thanks,
Alistair _______________________________________________
Haskell-Cafe mailing list
Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org
http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe

Forgot to say that I have git with git-bash installed, which seems to come
with a msys bundle. Is this sufficient, or should I install msys too?
On 10 October 2014 15:05, Michal Antkiewicz
Ah, forgot to add that you have to fix the PATH. By default, the platform installer creates a user variable PATH, which windows 8 automatically appends at the end of the system PATH. This way doing `cabal install cabal-install` will update cabal in user space but the platform one will always be used. So you must "prepend" the path to `c:\users\....\AppData\Roaming\cabal\bin` at the beginning of the system PATH to give user space executables priority over platform and global executables.
In MSYS, get friendly with `hash -r` command when you fiddle with PATHs.
Michal
On Thu, Oct 9, 2014 at 9:57 PM, Michal Antkiewicz < mantkiew@gsd.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
This is a question I am often asking myself as well. Here are a few points:
1. definitely install MSYS2 see links here http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Windows
2. I used Sublime Text 2 as well, switched to 3 now and it works great so far
3. Yes, installing the dev tools is a pain on Windows. It almost never just works. I install dev tools into the user space and always use sandboxes for projects. Currently I managed to install the following versions. You have to use these specific versions.
aeson-0.7.0.6 ghc-mod-4.1.6 haddock-2.14.3 haskell-docs-4.2.2 haskell-src-exts-1.15.0.1 hasktags-0.69.0 hlint-1.9.4
I could never get codex to work on Windows with Haskell Platform.
4. I also recommend ghc-vis package, which only today I managed to successfully install: http://felsin9.de/nnis/ghc-vis/installing-windows/ -- do not use `--enable-shared` in the last command
ghc-heap-view-0.5.3 ghc-vis-0.7.2.5
5. with hdevtools, you have to get the windows fork and pull one of the branches which makes it work with GHC-7.8.3 (I forgot exactly which one I pulled from). The fork is not maintained. I am hoping that `ghc-modi` will eventually replace `hdevtools` for SublimeHaskell.
Hope that helps to get you going. On Linux everything just works when you get GHC and cabal-install.
Cheers, Michal
On Thu, Oct 9, 2014 at 9:15 PM, Alistair Bayley
wrote: What is the current advice for getting a haskell dev env set up on windows? There's a lot of options, and it can be hard to quickly determine which are current and which are deprecated/bit-rotted.
For example, apparently cabal sandbox is preferred over cabal-dev these days.
I've read: http://onoffswitch.net/started-haskell/ http://stackoverflow.com/questions/304614/haskell-on-windows-setup http://coldwa.st/e/blog/2013-08-20-Cabal-sandbox.html http://bob.ippoli.to/archives/2013/01/11/getting-started-with-haskell/
I've installed the latest haskell platform (2014.2), and am using Sublime Text 2 as my editor. SublimeHaskell is installed, but apparently it needs aeson, haskell-src-ext, and haddock. cabal install aeson indicates that it will break unordered-containers-0.2.4.0 and case-insensitive-1.1.0.3, so I must use --force-reinstalls to get it. I'm doing this in a sandbox, in case it is a terrible idea.
https://github.com/SublimeHaskell/SublimeHaskell
Not yet sure how I'm going to get the sandbox install of these tools to work with SublimeHaskell. Presumably some PATH magic?
hdevtools looks cool and seems like it can be used from SublimeHaskell, although a windows install is from a fork. Will install ghc-mod too.
What else am I missing?
Thanks, Alistair
_______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe

The one you have with git might work as well. I used to use
GetMinGWInstaller to install MSYS before.
MSYS2 is a "modern" version of MSYS and it's recommended on HaskellWiki, so
I'm going with that.
Michal
On Thu, Oct 9, 2014 at 10:18 PM, Alistair Bayley
Forgot to say that I have git with git-bash installed, which seems to come with a msys bundle. Is this sufficient, or should I install msys too?
On 10 October 2014 15:05, Michal Antkiewicz
wrote: Ah, forgot to add that you have to fix the PATH. By default, the platform installer creates a user variable PATH, which windows 8 automatically appends at the end of the system PATH. This way doing `cabal install cabal-install` will update cabal in user space but the platform one will always be used. So you must "prepend" the path to `c:\users\....\AppData\Roaming\cabal\bin` at the beginning of the system PATH to give user space executables priority over platform and global executables.
In MSYS, get friendly with `hash -r` command when you fiddle with PATHs.
Michal
On Thu, Oct 9, 2014 at 9:57 PM, Michal Antkiewicz < mantkiew@gsd.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
This is a question I am often asking myself as well. Here are a few points:
1. definitely install MSYS2 see links here http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Windows
2. I used Sublime Text 2 as well, switched to 3 now and it works great so far
3. Yes, installing the dev tools is a pain on Windows. It almost never just works. I install dev tools into the user space and always use sandboxes for projects. Currently I managed to install the following versions. You have to use these specific versions.
aeson-0.7.0.6 ghc-mod-4.1.6 haddock-2.14.3 haskell-docs-4.2.2 haskell-src-exts-1.15.0.1 hasktags-0.69.0 hlint-1.9.4
I could never get codex to work on Windows with Haskell Platform.
4. I also recommend ghc-vis package, which only today I managed to successfully install: http://felsin9.de/nnis/ghc-vis/installing-windows/ -- do not use `--enable-shared` in the last command
ghc-heap-view-0.5.3 ghc-vis-0.7.2.5
5. with hdevtools, you have to get the windows fork and pull one of the branches which makes it work with GHC-7.8.3 (I forgot exactly which one I pulled from). The fork is not maintained. I am hoping that `ghc-modi` will eventually replace `hdevtools` for SublimeHaskell.
Hope that helps to get you going. On Linux everything just works when you get GHC and cabal-install.
Cheers, Michal
On Thu, Oct 9, 2014 at 9:15 PM, Alistair Bayley
wrote: What is the current advice for getting a haskell dev env set up on windows? There's a lot of options, and it can be hard to quickly determine which are current and which are deprecated/bit-rotted.
For example, apparently cabal sandbox is preferred over cabal-dev these days.
I've read: http://onoffswitch.net/started-haskell/ http://stackoverflow.com/questions/304614/haskell-on-windows-setup http://coldwa.st/e/blog/2013-08-20-Cabal-sandbox.html http://bob.ippoli.to/archives/2013/01/11/getting-started-with-haskell/
I've installed the latest haskell platform (2014.2), and am using Sublime Text 2 as my editor. SublimeHaskell is installed, but apparently it needs aeson, haskell-src-ext, and haddock. cabal install aeson indicates that it will break unordered-containers-0.2.4.0 and case-insensitive-1.1.0.3, so I must use --force-reinstalls to get it. I'm doing this in a sandbox, in case it is a terrible idea.
https://github.com/SublimeHaskell/SublimeHaskell
Not yet sure how I'm going to get the sandbox install of these tools to work with SublimeHaskell. Presumably some PATH magic?
hdevtools looks cool and seems like it can be used from SublimeHaskell, although a windows install is from a fork. Will install ghc-mod too.
What else am I missing?
Thanks, Alistair
_______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe

On Thu, Oct 09, 2014 at 11:39:48PM -0400, Michal Antkiewicz wrote:
The one you have with git might work as well. I used to use GetMinGWInstaller to install MSYS before.
MSYS2 is a "modern" version of MSYS and it's recommended on HaskellWiki, so I'm going with that.
Also note that MSYS2 comes with a recent version of git, so no need to install git-on-windows with its own msys bundle. Unless you want some git gui-ness of course. /M -- Magnus Therning OpenPGP: 0xAB4DFBA4 email: magnus@therning.org jabber: magnus@therning.org twitter: magthe http://therning.org/magnus Code as if whoever maintains your program is a violent psychopath who knows where you live. -- Anonymous

Hi Michal,
I'm the author of codex and I would love to make it compatible with
Windows!
It might be an issue related with paths or calling the tagger command...
There is few things I have in mind.
If you are interested, I would love to continue the discussion on the bug
tracker.
Do you mind creating a ticket with as much information you can provide
(error messages,...)?
Thanks a lot!
On Oct 10, 2014 2:58 AM, "Michal Antkiewicz"
This is a question I am often asking myself as well. Here are a few points:
1. definitely install MSYS2 see links here http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Windows
2. I used Sublime Text 2 as well, switched to 3 now and it works great so far
3. Yes, installing the dev tools is a pain on Windows. It almost never just works. I install dev tools into the user space and always use sandboxes for projects. Currently I managed to install the following versions. You have to use these specific versions.
aeson-0.7.0.6 ghc-mod-4.1.6 haddock-2.14.3 haskell-docs-4.2.2 haskell-src-exts-1.15.0.1 hasktags-0.69.0 hlint-1.9.4
I could never get codex to work on Windows with Haskell Platform.
4. I also recommend ghc-vis package, which only today I managed to successfully install: http://felsin9.de/nnis/ghc-vis/installing-windows/ -- do not use `--enable-shared` in the last command
ghc-heap-view-0.5.3 ghc-vis-0.7.2.5
5. with hdevtools, you have to get the windows fork and pull one of the branches which makes it work with GHC-7.8.3 (I forgot exactly which one I pulled from). The fork is not maintained. I am hoping that `ghc-modi` will eventually replace `hdevtools` for SublimeHaskell.
Hope that helps to get you going. On Linux everything just works when you get GHC and cabal-install.
Cheers, Michal
On Thu, Oct 9, 2014 at 9:15 PM, Alistair Bayley
wrote: What is the current advice for getting a haskell dev env set up on windows? There's a lot of options, and it can be hard to quickly determine which are current and which are deprecated/bit-rotted.
For example, apparently cabal sandbox is preferred over cabal-dev these days.
I've read: http://onoffswitch.net/started-haskell/ http://stackoverflow.com/questions/304614/haskell-on-windows-setup http://coldwa.st/e/blog/2013-08-20-Cabal-sandbox.html http://bob.ippoli.to/archives/2013/01/11/getting-started-with-haskell/
I've installed the latest haskell platform (2014.2), and am using Sublime Text 2 as my editor. SublimeHaskell is installed, but apparently it needs aeson, haskell-src-ext, and haddock. cabal install aeson indicates that it will break unordered-containers-0.2.4.0 and case-insensitive-1.1.0.3, so I must use --force-reinstalls to get it. I'm doing this in a sandbox, in case it is a terrible idea.
https://github.com/SublimeHaskell/SublimeHaskell
Not yet sure how I'm going to get the sandbox install of these tools to work with SublimeHaskell. Presumably some PATH magic?
hdevtools looks cool and seems like it can be used from SublimeHaskell, although a windows install is from a fork. Will install ghc-mod too.
What else am I missing?
Thanks, Alistair
_______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
_______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
participants (4)
-
Alistair Bayley
-
Alois Cochard
-
Magnus Therning
-
Michal Antkiewicz