GHC development with VSCode

[Richard Eisenberg]

Hi devs,

I have migrated to use VSCode instead of emacs. There are the usual switchover pains, but I'm mostly pleased. One particular point of pleasure was that I had to do nothing, at all, to get VSCode working within the GHC code base. (Well, I had to switch to Hadrian, but perhaps that's for the best.)

My problem: VSCode over GHC pins my processor at 100% if I edit anything. Any advice for fixing this?

A little more detail: When VSCode starts up, it spends a while "processing" and "indexing" (no idea what these mean). OK. I can pay that one-time cost. But as I start editing, etc., it needs to process and index a lot more. Somewhat continuously. This slows my computer down generally, and -- more annoyingly -- slows down my builds (run in a separate terminal).

I understand why VSCode wants to do this: it's checking my code for errors, etc. But is there a way to say "not now, please"? More specifically: I'd like to stop VSCode from detecting errors in my code while I'm actively editing. It's just too slow. On the other hand, it would be brilliant if VSCode could continue to allow me to, say, jump to definitions and gather references, using its latest knowledge of the code. As I edit, I understand this "latest knowledge" may become stale, if I'm stopping VSCode from reprocessing and reindexing. So, it would be nice to be able to tell VSCode to refresh, when I want that.

Any pointers here? https://gitlab.haskell.org/ghc/ghc/-/wikis/Visual-Studio-Code <https://gitlab.haskell.org/ghc/ghc/-/wikis/Visual-Studio-Code> would be a good place to put them!

Thanks,
Richard
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