[Haskell-cafe] ANN: Leksah 0.15

[Hamish Mackenzie]

Hi Everyone,

The new leksah package is in Hackage and the installers for
Windows and OS X are available for download at:

  https://github.com/leksah/leksah/wiki/download
  (remember to choose the one that matches your GHC version)


Nw in this release:

* Support for GHC 7.10.1.

* Uses Gtk+ 3.16 on Windows and OS X.

* GtkInspector works on all platforms (Ctrl+Shift+I).

* Updated build instructions https://github.com/leksah/leksah
  (OS X and Windows builds are fairly easy now).

* Underlining of doctest failures.

* Lots of bug fixes.


Things that are new since 0.14.0:

* Support for using GHCJS.
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQnExdDL63c

* GtkInspector https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/GTK%2B/Inspector.

* Web Inspector pane (right click on output pane to bring it up.
  https://trac.webkit.org/wiki/WebInspector

* Cabal commands executed by Leksah show up in the log pane.


I remain optimistic about the future of Leksah.  GTK+ has improved
hugely in the last couple of years.  Also WebKitGTK+ and GHCJS mean
integrating tools into Leksah will be easier than ever.  A great
many people contribute (mostly indirectly) to Leksah, it is much
appreciated and I hope that number will grow.

As always, please help!  Hop on #leksah or file and issue at
https://github.com/leksah/leksah/issues, even if it is just 
to vent your displeasure with Leksah (every bug report helps).

Here are some fun ideas you might like to try working on
if you are looking for a way to contribute to Leksah:

* Try using Leksah and fix the thing that annoys you most
  about it.

* Figure out if/how ide-backend can be used in Leksah.

* Create an XMonad like manager for <div> based panes.
  Ideally it would work for both GTK+ and GHCJS.

* Migrate existing UI components from Gtk+ to GHCJS.

* Anything GHCJS based and then add support in Leksah for it.

* GHCJS based scripting (make it work for Leksah like
  elisp for Emacs).

* Improve Yi integration.  What we have is unusably incomplete.

* Add GHCJS backend for Yi (replacing the Pango one).

* Improve JavaScript based editor support (currently only
  CodeMirror is supported and not very well).

* Add support for using SoH and/or FPView within Leksah.

If you are interested in any of these please let me
know and I will do what I can to help you get started.

Hamish

PS. I am kind of sad Eclipse FP has stalled for now and I hope
it restarts soon.  Integrating Haskell into existing IDEs
(especially those with large user bases) will help sell Haskell
to the world.  I wish JP well and I am sure he will find
something interesting and challenging to work on next.