[Haskell-cafe] Haskell Platform and Leksah on Windows

[Dorin Lazar]

Hi,
I understood what's wrong about my approach - and since I want to use
an IDE to assist me, I will try both EclipseFP and Sublime Text, to
see how that works. My feeling was that since the leksah website
suggested that cabal is the way to do it and since when I search for a
Haskell IDE that is it, then it was obvious that the recommended way
doesn't work as it should. In my mind the platform was broken, I
understand now that it's not the platform, just this special way of
using it.

I was also in awe of the fact that nobody really says anything about
these difficulties, and felt like an estranged child that messed
things up badly; however, it seems that the real issue is that nobody
really does it that way, and I was wrong to actually try it like that.
As I said (or haven't, but will) once I will get the hang of it I will
recount my experience for others to follow, hopefully in better terms
than this frustrating first experience.

Many thanks for everyone's advice on the list,
  Dorin

On Thu, Aug 8, 2013 at 9:48 PM, Carter Schonwald
<carter.schonwald at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hey Dorin,
> I don't understand your claims.
>
> 1) haskell has worked perfectly well on windows for quite some time. I used
> HUGs nearly a decade ago, and in more recent time (2-3 years ago) I helped
> teach an introductory first computer science class using GHC where many
> students were doing great work using notepad++ and ghci.
>
>  I don't understand your focus on emacs and make files.
>
> 2)  if you want an "IDE" experience, Sublime Text with the right plugins, or
> perhaps EclipseFP are worth checking out.
>
> 3) likewise, if you're finding tooling on windows unsatisfactory, help fix
> it! Bug reports, patches, or new tools and libraries are always welcome.
> Haskell is a relatively small community, and thusly limited manpower (we're
> all volunteers), so way to fix any problem is help out!
>
> cheers
>
>
> On Thu, Aug 8, 2013 at 3:30 AM, Dorin Lazar <dorin.lazar at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>  Hello,
>>  I am the original author of the post, and I finally received the
>> emails from the mailman (probably there was an issue with the
>> automated requests).
>>   My answers are inlined.
>>
>> > 1) Leksah should not be considered an "official haskell ide", but merely
>> > one of
>> > many community supported editing tools. And frankly one of the less
>> > widely
>> > used ones at that! Leksah is not used much at all by anyone, though
>> > theres
>> > probably a handful of folks who do use it.
>> >  Many folks use editors like Sublime Tex (2/3), Emacs, Vi(m), textmate,
>> > and
>> > many more.  Its worth noting that the sublime-haskell plugin for sublime
>> > text, and analogous packages for many other editors, provide haskell
>> > IDE-like powers, or at least a nice subset thereof.
>>   Unfortunately, I think the problem with this is that we have a
>> different vision on how development should be done. I have extensive
>> experience of working from console, with a simple text editor and
>> hand-made Makefiles or anything similar. However, an IDE should be a
>> productivity tool, that can help you improve your understanding of the
>> language, and can assist you in following the proper syntax for a new
>> language. While learning by doing 'write, save, compile, examine error
>> message' is ok with me, it is slow, and it limits the time I can
>> dedicate to learning the language itself. A better cycle is the
>> current 'write, examine error message' of most IDEs, since it's faster
>> and requires no context switch. Sure, editors can help there. IDEs do
>> this by default.
>>   So it's normal of me to search for an IDE to better learn the
>> language, I'll leave the emacs + console version for when I am
>> productive in the language.
>>
>> > 2) There are people working on building better easily portable native
>> > gui
>> > toolkits, but in many respects, a nice haskelly gui toolkit is still
>> > something people are experimetning with how to do well. theres lots of
>> > great
>> > tools out as of the past year or two, many more in progress on various
>> > time
>> > scales, and gtk2hs is great for linux (and thats fine).
>>   Unfortunately, this is not what's advertised. In fact, on the leksah
>> site, the recommended method is to have the IDE installed via cabal.
>> In another mail Mihai calls me unreasonable, but I think it's
>> reasonable to think that the recommended method should be the one that
>> works.
>>   But the easy to tell truth is that the Haskell Platform for Windows
>> is not mature enough yet. That is something I can understand, and I
>> can recommend other beginners to install a Linux VM for Haskell. That
>> is perfectly fine, zero cost, 100% gain. However, the mistakes from
>> the Haskell Platform as it is now on Windows should be pointed out,
>> and although I've been called a mystical animal that wants only free
>> support, I think what I had in that blog post was actually a bug
>> report for the people that can actually add 1+1 to make 2 when it
>> comes to the Haskell Platform for Windows. Surely, I was harsh. But
>> that's the first experience of a beginner with Haskell, and I chose to
>> contribute my experience to people more knowledgeable instead of
>> shutting up and hiding the dust under the rug.
>>
>>   Many thanks,
>>      Dorin
>
>