EclipseFP 2.2.4 released

I can't believe I've managed to keep the rhythm again, but a month after 2.2.3, here's 2.2.4! It's another minor release featuring:
- task tags: TODO, FIXME, etc in source code translate to task tags. This is configurable.
- GTK wizard: creates a new executable with the default sample GTK code and GTK dependency.
- Documentation generation goes through cabal haddock: less hassle, more power.
- You can now configure extra cabal parameters for your projects. For example, you can add more include and library directories that are specific to your install without modifying the cabal file.
- Hopefully better content assist: using the power of scion-browser to be able to provide more and better auto complete proposals.
- Better handling of related projects (for declaration resolution, breakpoint resolution, etc).

There are also a few bug fixes in there of course. Thanks to everybody for their feedback! Buildwrapper and scion-browser have had minor releases too.

I haven't yet started the big addition that would be a workspace wide embedded database to be able to do Haskell-sensitive searches and replace, but I've though about it, so I have a good idea on how I'm going to attack that. Hopefully for a 2.3.0!

The full release notes can be found here. As usual, to install, just point your Eclipse update UI to http://eclipsefp.sf.net/updates. 


New to eclipseFP? Check out the web site, and there's documentation inside Eclipse too...


Happy Haskell Hacking with EclipseFP!

Heads-up: EclipseFP moving to Java 1.6

Up to now EclipseFP kept Java 1.5 compatibility. Java 6 does not bring that much in terms of API so I was happy to keep it that way. However, I moved a few months back to Eclipse Indigo and since then I've had problem generating the plugin code. I have the feeling that exporting plugins compiled with a 1.6 JDK in 1.5 compatibility mode didn't work well (ending up in errors like "class java.lang.Object could not be resolved", which is scary enough in Java). So I bit the bullet and changed the compatibility level on all plugins. They do now require 1.6.
This change will come in EclipseFP 2.2.4 which I think will be released pretty soon (next week maybe) with a few minor enhancements. So if you were still stuck with Java 1.5, get ready to move... I suppose it will not affect many people anyway, but I'd rather warn in advance to avoid nasty surprises...

Can Frege (Haskell on Java) deliver?

As you know, I'm the main (and more or less, at the moment the sole) developer for EclipseFP. It's going reasonably well, I'm putting a few enhancements here and there, and there are a few big things that I'm planning to do that would be exciting to do and hopefully to use.

However, I can't shake off a nagging feeling that maybe my energy is not 100% useful to the community. The compelling argument of EclipseFP is that it allows developers that are familiar with Eclipse to develop in Haskell as easily as possible: they can concentrate on writing their Haskell code and not have to learn another IDE to do it. But I'm wondering if really there is an audience (apart for myself).
- Unix Hackers will use Vi/Emacs and will scoff at the very notion of using an IDE.
- People really into Haskell would probably prefer an IDE written in Haskell like Leksah, especially since such an IDE actually proves that developing GUI programs in Haskell is possible!
- People that are in the Eclipse/Java world and want to go into functional programming can do so in Scala, Clojure and of course now Frege. Frege now boasts an Eclipse plug-in as well, so really the incentive is great: you can use a Haskell-like language in Eclipse, with probably better integration that what EclipseFP can achieve since everything in Frege boils down to Java. I suppose you could even write the Eclipse plugin code in Frege.

I'm even tempted to make the jump myself. Maybe with Frege I'll get a ecosystem that's doesn't consider Windows as a second grade platform. But can it deliver, in terms of power, performance, reliability?
One thing is clear: Frege is moving forward, which is more that can be said, as far as I know, of others Haskell on the JVM efforts (even the Wiki page says that it'd be a hard job to do, obviously the Frege developers didn't let themselves be scared).

I'll be interested in hearing feedback on people's experience with Frege, and I think I'll take it for a spin myself soon. I'll post my experiences!

Revamping Haddock generation in EclipseFP

My attention was attracted to Haddock documentation generation when Serguei Trofimovich tried to build the documentation for buildwrapper. Not only did he fix some issues with it in my code (thanks Serguei!), but I then realized that I couldn't build the docs from EclipseFP. EclipseFP does provide a Haddock generation wizard, but it forgets to pass the proper GHC options, so if you reference hidden packages for example it won't work. The wizard seemed also very complex.
So I did what I do best, I hacked and slashed. I've removed the full haddock plugin and replaced it with a one page export wizard that uses cabal haddock, and only exposes the options cabal haddock supports. Works well.
So if ever you're reading this and you were using the old Haddock wizard in EclipseFP and really you need some features from it to be kept, give me a shout! Otherwise, you can have a look at the new wizard by getting the source from github.

Hopefully I'll release version 2.2.4 of EclipseFP soon enough, anyway.

Happy Haskell Hacking (and slashing :-))!

EclipseFP 2.2.3 released!

I didn't mean to make it exactly one month since last release, but EclipseFP 2.2.3 is out! There is also a new release of buildwrapper to go with it (0.5.0) and Alejandro released scion-browser 0.2.7 yesterday.
This comes with both bug fixes and minor enhancements that I hope you like. The readme has all the details, but basically:
- Michael Jones has tested EclipseFP thoroughly on Mac OSX, so it should run fine on that platform now. Please remember that UI applications may not use the same PATH as your Terminal, which may explain why things are not found, etc. Thanks Michael for the work!
- We have tried to improve autocomplete and text hovers by adding documentation and types when possible, autocompletion of pragmas, etc.
- Hopefully everything should build and work fine under GHC 7.4.1.

Hopefully the next step will be a big one: I'd like to be able to put together the GHC analysis of all modules of the project in some kind of DB to do things like project and workspace-wide type-aware searches, safe renaming, etc.

Thanks to the supportive users that not only report issues but are happy to investigate, you know who you are!

Happy Haskell hacking in EclipseFP!