[Haskell-cafe] Refactoring status

[C.M.Brown]

Hi Peter,

> Is any work being done on Haskell refactoring support, like HaRe or others?

HaRe is still very active and is due for a new release very soon.
There are probably in excess of 40 refactorings for HaRe in total now, and
I intend to add more! Sadly, I am currently the only maintainer left
on the project, so I am busy trying to implement new refactorings and
finish off my thesis.

> Is anyone actively using refactoring? When using C#, I used Resharper a lot,
> and ever since, I'm really hooked to refactoring, so I miss it a lot when
> doing Haskelling. (I never seem to get a function name or signature right
> the first time. is it just me? J)

The greatest problem that the HaRe group have experienced is that HaRe
supports Haskell 98. While this is the perfect model for academic
investigation and Haskell tool design, most of the real world use the de
facto standard of GHC haskell. We would really like HaRe to be ported over to GHC at some point
in the near future.

> I'm currently using Emacs with Haskell Mode (which does not offer
> refactoring support) but I think many of you use VIM (which does support
> it?)
> Can one use refactoring outside of an editor? This does not really sound
> practical,  but maybe it works?

HaRe works with both Emacs and VIM; you can also use it from a command
prompt meaning that it can be integrated into any tool that you require.
Indeed, there was even some investigation of porting it to Sub Etha Edit
with great success!

> PS: IMHO I don't think text should be the source format of our files. I
> think we should use a standarized decorated AST as the source, from which we
> can derive a textual (but also graphical) view and editor. Any comments on
> that? J

You mean a syntax-directed editor, right?

Kind regards,
Chris.