[Haskell-cafe] EclipseFP (Haskell IDE) 0.9.1 released

[Graham Klyne]

Bulat Ziganshin wrote:
> Hello Graham,
> 
> Wednesday, February 01, 2006, 4:21:02 PM, you wrote:
> 
> GK> So is there a compelling feature in this Eclipse plugin that isn't easily
> GK> achieved using simpler tools?
> 
> it's a list of what-i-want-from-the-IDE:

Aha, thanks.  By way of feedback, here are my personal reactions to these features:

> * autogeneration of prototypes

I don't know what you mean by this.

> * auto-adding import statements

Handy (i.e. I like the feature, but I'm not sure I'd fire up Eclipse to get it)

> * adding/removing function from the export list

Handy

> * background compilation with parsing error messages

Handy

> * switchable compilation types (optimized, profiled...)

Useful - in preparing production systems, I probably would use Eclipse for this

> * context help

Very nice - might persuade me to use Eclipse routinely (I assume you mean things
like getting help about functions, esp. prelude and standard libraries)

> * expression evaluation in context of my program's definitions

Very nice.

> * "sjow me the Core for this function"

Not something I'd use often, but I can see its value.

> * project support (i.e. show list of all files in this project)

Hmmm... I sort-of get that with my text editor.  But I agree that exploiting the
Eclipse file hierarchy browser would be handy.

> * type-based function hierarchy browsing

Very nice.  I assume this allows functions to be located from type signatures,
including prelude and standard libraries.

> * auto-indenting
> * syntax colouring, folding, brackets matching, jumping to function
> definition (these things are already in vim)

These are handy to have, but as you indicate don't need a full IDE support.

...

In summary, I think there's enough there to make me think seriously about using
Eclipse for Haskell development, at least some of the time.

Something I'd also like is in-editor warnings of features that are not supported
uniformly across different implementations -- my (rough) criteria for "portable
Haskell" has been to check that code runs with GHC and Hugs.

Also, some form of integrated testing support would be nice.  There was brief
discussion here some time ago about something like assert statements that could
be checked at compile time -- if you have in-context expression evaluation then
this wouldn't be a great leap:  e.g. scan the code for identifiable expressions
that are expected to be true, and report warnings if they are not.

When I get back to some Haskell coding, I must try out your package.  Thanks!

#g

-- 
Graham Klyne
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