Installing binary dependencies

Project status

As of May, 25th 2022, this project is officially unmaintained. If you would like to take over, drop a message to @lierdakil.

If you're looking for a decent editor support for Haskell, consider using VSCode with Haskell extensions.

Supported ghc-mod versions are 5.6. and up.

These instructions assume you want to use stylish-haskell as a prettifier. If you would like to use hindent or brittany instead, substitute that in place of stylish-haskell below.

Bear in mind that prettifier has to be able to work as a unix filter, i.e. accept input on STDIN and return output on STDOUT.

The Atom-Haskell packages (and this instructions) assume that you have at least a minimal Haskell toolchain installed on your system. See https://www.haskell.org/downloads for your options.

Please bear in mind that official release ghc-mod v5.8.0.0 doesn’t support GHC 8.2. If installing GHC separately, make sure to get GHC 8.0, otherwise, you might run into problems.

Note that stackage lts-10.x uses GHC 8.2. If you want to use stack with official release of ghc-mod, stick to lts-9 for now.

If feeling adventurous, you can try building an unstable ghc-mod for your chosen GHC version.
master branch should work with GHC 8.2
lierdakil/ghc-8.4.3 branch seems to work with GHC 8.4.3 (in particular, stack LTS-12)

Alternatively, you can use ide-haskell-repl to employ plain old GHCi as a backend provider. This is a rather limited option compared to ghc-mod, but it might work better for newer GHC versions. Refer to ide-haskell-repl page for more information.

This guide only touches on installing prettifier (like stylish-haskell) and ghc-mod (which you need for all the “good stuff”, like type tooltips and autocompletion). Extra packages, however, can have other binary dependencies. Installation procedure is rather similar, so no detailed guide is provided. Refer to requirements list for more information.

With stack

See also section on using haskell-ghc-mod with stack

Latest stack lts resolver (which is used by default) uses GHC 8.2, which ghc-mod isn’t compatible with as of yet. Please stick to lts-9 for now if you want to use ghc-mod.

Probably a simpler way to start with is to build binary dependencies with stack. Refer to stack documentation to get more information about it.

Run the following commands from a command line terminal after you get yourself a minimal Haskell toolchain (either via Haskell Platform, or with stack setup):

$ stack install stylish-haskell
...
Copied executables to {STACK_INSTALL_PATH}:
- stylish-haskell
$ stack --resolver lts-9 install ghc-mod
...
Copied executables to {STACK_INSTALL_PATH}:
- ghc-mod
- ghc-modi

Note the --resolver lts-9 part in ghc-mod example – this ensures that stack uses GHC 8.0 to build ghc-mod. Since ghc-mod will only work for the GHC version it was built with, you might also want to tell stack to use lts-9.x resolver. You can do that by running stack config set resolver lts-9 either in a project (which will change the project’s stack.yaml) or outside of any project, which will modify settings in stack’s global config. See stack documentation for more information.

… where STACK_INSTALL_PATH depends on your operating system. For example, on OS X or Linux this path will usually be ~/.local/bin/.

First, make sure that STACK_INSTALL_PATH is on your executable search path (i.e. $PATH for OS X and Linux).

On Linux, avoid setting PATH in .bashrc/.zshrc. These scripts are only executed in interactive shells, which means you’ll have to start Atom from terminal session for it to pick PATH up correctly.

On OSX, Atom can fail to set PATH correctly regardless.

If Atom fails to find a required executable (such as stylish-haskell) you will get an error that reads something like this:

Ide-haskell could not spawn stylish-haskell

Error: spawn stylish-haskell ENOENT

If this happens, you will need to modify relevant package’s settings to point to the absolute path to where you installed the executable. For example, if your STACK_INSTALL_PATH were /home/johndoe/.local/bin/ then the absolute path to the executable would be /home/johndoe/.local/bin/executable.

A notable exception is haskell-ghc-mod package. Avoid setting ‘Ghc Mod Path’ to anything but ghc-mod (i.e. plain executable name) if at all possible. Instead, add the directory containing ghc-mod executable to ‘Additional Path Directories’, so, using the example above, add /home/johndoe/.local/bin to ‘Additional Path Directories’.

With cabal

You do not need to do this if you already installed with stack.

Alternatively, you can use cabal-install if you don’t want to use stack for some reason.

It is advisable to first create a cabal sandbox for the installation to avoid global package database pollution and conflicts. This will also make updating easy.

To create a sandbox, create a directory, f.ex.

mkdir $HOME/ghc-mod-sandbox

Windows command line shell uses different syntax for environment variables, and there is usually no HOME defined anyway. We sincerely hope you can figure this out.

Then, cd into int:

cd $HOME/ghc-mod-sandbox

And run the following command

cabal sandbox init --sandbox=.

The last part, namely --sandbox=., is used to shorten paths. By default, cabal will create sandbox in .cabal-sandbox directory. This option tells it to use current directory instead.

If you decide not to use sandbox for some reason, by default cabal will install binaries into $HOME/.cabal/bin/ on Linux and $HOME/Library/Haskell/bin on OSX.

Now you can install ghc-mod and stylish-haskell. In the same directory run

cabal install ghc-mod stylish-haskell

Now you have ghc-mod and stylish-haskell installed. Binary files are in $HOME/ghc-mod-sandbox/bin. You can add this path to PATH, or put full path to executables in relevant ide-haskell settings and full path to directory in haskell-ghc-mod ‘Additional Path Directories’.

For example, assuming your HOME is /home/user:

  • In ide-haskell settings, set ‘Stylish Haskell Path’ to /home/user/ghc-mod-sandbox/bin/stylish-haskell
  • In haskell-ghc-mod settings, set ‘Additional Path Directories’ to /home/user/ghc-mod-sandbox/bin

Avoid setting ‘Ghc Mod Path’ in haskell-ghc-mod settings to anything but ghc-mod (i.e. plain executable name) if at all possible. Instead, use ‘Additional Path Directories’.

‘Cabal Sandbox’ option will make haskell-ghc-mod look for ghc-mod executable in the current project’s Cabal sandbox first, so if using Cabal sandboxes, you can install ghc-mod per-project.

Don’t forget to replace $HOME with actual path to home directory! Atom doesn’t expand shell variables in package settings.

On Linux and OSX, you can run echo $HOME/ghc-mod-sandbox/bin/* in the terminal to get actual paths to all executables, if not sure what those should look like.

With Nix

On NixOS, or with Nix package manager, Haskell binaries are available in the haskellPackages attribute set.

You can query the list of all available Haskell packages with: nix-env -f "<nixpkgs>" -qaP -A haskellPackages

Install ghc-mod and stylish-haskell.

nix-env -f "<nixpkgs>" -iA haskellPackages.ghc-mod haskellPackages.stylish-haskell

You should now have ghc-mod and stylish-haskell available in your profile.