[Haskell-cafe] Re: Announcement: Beta of Leksah IDE available

[Achim Schneider]

J__rgen Nicklisch-Franken <jnf at arcor.de> wrote:

> So I please the members of the community to pause for a moment and try
> out Leksah with a benevolent attitude.
>
I did (the previous version, tbh), and couldn't find anything to
seriously bicker about... a few problems regarding metadata generation,
but that was dealt with as soon as I RTFM'ed. Ah, yes, you shouldn't be
able to close the toolbar by pressing on one of its buttons that
incidentally looks just like the one to close a file.

Completition already rocks, the interface is nicely configurable
(although I resorted to editing config and session files instead of
using gui commands[1]), project management worked out fine (after I
figured out that I had to manually configure leksah to pass --user to
cabal), all in all it's an impressive piece of code that radiates later
uberness instead of lacking features. Last, but not least, it's _fast_,
_waaaaaaaaay_ more zappy than eclipse. As far as basic IDE features are
concerned, it's also complete.


The one thing that keeps me from switching to it, right now, is the
editor not being a vi. While gtksourceview might be, in theory,
a usable editor, my muscle memory tells me otherwise. It'd be like
switching to autoconf for C development instead of just copying over my
beloved OMakefile.


Providing refactoring support would make it irresistible... maybe it's
time to add a plugin layer, so that things like vacuum or a wrapper
around hp2ps can register themselves with leksah, without giving up
their identity as stand-alone projects. Plugability is the one feature
that made eclipse big, and it won't hurt leksah, either.


[1] I utterly failed to figure out how to do stuff[2], seriously.
    Eclipse has a really nice drag&drop interface with visual feedback
    to rearrange stuff, but I'm not the kind of guy who drops a program
    for lacking such bells&whistles.
[2] "Stuff" being rearranging divisions such that it's first split
    horizontally, the console/type view etc. taking up the bottom part
    and the upper part being split vertically into source view/module
    browser. I just can't stand wrapped lines on the console. Somehow,
    I think it should be the default arrangement.

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