Add IDE support chart

[rainbyte]

Hello,

I figured out that editor/IDE features could be tracked using a chart.

In this pr there is a basic example, inspired by rust areweideyet.

Thanks in advance!

[Gabriella439]

Looks great so far! I have a few questions:

• What is "Snippets" support referring to?
• What is the scope of the "Debugger" column? The reason I ask is that Debugger can mean different things to different people. Some people interpret it as stepping through code (i.e. integration with the ghci debugger with breakpoints and single stepping) and others have lower expectations and interpret it as just having a REPL available with the project loaded into the REPL
• Do the vim and emacs editors include their plugins? I believe both of those editors support a large number of those columns if you include plugins
• vim supports "Goto Def" out of the box through it's builtin support for ctags (and Haskell's fast-tags package provides an executable that generates the expected ctags format)
• hindent is used for automatic code formatting and I know that at least emacs/vim/atom support hindent integration
• Any editor that supports ghc-mod supports code auto-completion, and I know for sure that emacs/vim/atom do via plugins (and possibly IntelliJ, too)
• I'd also suggest the following additional columns (which you can fill with question marks for now; we can fill them in later):
  • Infer type at location
    • I'm not sure how much this overlaps with "Doc tooltips"
  • Hoogle integration
    • I'm not sure how much this overlaps with "Doc tooltips"
  • Automatically manage import list
    • By this I mean not just formatting it for you, but actually adding imports for you for newly introduced symbols and pruning unused imports)
  • Automatically manage dependencies

[rainbyte]

Thanks for the fast answer... About the items:

• Snippets would be as in emacs yasnippet. Completion for pre-made pices of code (e.g. if I type "if", it could offer "if _ then _ else _")
• I think debugger is the step-by-step one. The other could be just "repl", maybe.
• About plugins: I've written which one supports the feature inside a tooltip. I think each line should contain a single config with only compatible plugins (e.g. emacs+intero and emacs+ghc-mod should have separate lines in the table).
• I do not use vim nor ctags (didn't know about it, will investigate), but in vscode haskelly provides "goto def" without any special config/preparation (I think it is via intero). Maybe the table should indicate in some way (e.g. via colour?) which one works automatically, and which one needs manual intervention.
• I'll investigate (and add) hindent
• About completion: in theory lots of plugins/configs support this feature, in practice that's not always true (e.g. in some cases completion does not work with modules, or does not even work alt all). This should be reflected in the table.
• I like those ideas... Let's see how to include them without making the table too big / unmanageable.

Thanks again for your detailed review :)

[rainbyte]

Ahh... I've written "docs tooltip" as in "type info + some description text (if available)".

[rainbyte]

I've apply some of the suggestions, and added links to the projects/plugins behind each feature.

[rainbyte]

Also added different symbols to represent the support level

[saurabhnanda]

Some more suggestions:

• Go-to definition when the current file doesn't compile due to a type-error -- are Java IDEs able to handle this?
• Displaying type variable-names in documentation tooltips
• Display expanded TH splices, like macro-expand in Lisp
• Support for hot code reloading -- very important for webapp development

[rainbyte]

When there are features missing in some item or support was reduced (e.g. plug-in does not work anymore), we could handle those situations with a decrease in level of support (e.g. goto def cannot be best in class if it could be provide a feature but it does not).

Type variable names should be part of doc. tooltips. Maybe each category should state somewhere which sub-features are taken into account.

I think TH and Hot Code Reloading should have an independent item.

[rainbyte]

I'm updating the chart here. At least until it is ready to be merged.

[Gabriella439]

One minor bikeshed: is there any reason that you use a new moon for excellent support and full moon for poor support? I would have expected the opposite

Also, the current system doesn't have an option for: "the feature is completely absent". I also don't think there needs to be a "best in class" rating for these sorts of things. I think "mature" is good enough for the highest ranking. One possible suggestion is:

• New moon = Feature is absent
• Half moon = Immature
• Full moon = Mature
• ... = Unknown

The one column I definitely would really like to see is automatic import management, even if it turns out that no editor supports it yet. That's a big deal for Haskell programmers and I would like to draw attention to the need for that feature. Haskell is an import-heavy language due to lacking support for object-oriented features.

Also, I like the idea of linking the entries to the specific plugin that supports the feature

There should also be an entry for Leksah, too. That's actively maintained and pretty feature rich

For more specific information on entries:

• atom's support for doc tooltips is mature
• I believe there are two IntelliJ plugins for Haskell: the one created by JetBrains and the HaskForce plugin so we should clarify which one the chart is referring to (or include rows for both)

[chris-martin]

This is the good IntelliJ plugin: https://github.com/rikvdkleij/intellij-haskell

[ocharles]

I wonder if modes of transport might be a little more intuitive than moon phase. 🚲 🚗 🚀 for example, shows an evolution.

[themattchan]

Re: @Gabriel439's tweet:

I don't have opinions on IDE support, but I do have some on emacs integration. Maybe this is the wrong thread to discuss these, but here's a brain dump/wishlist --

• Automatic cabal file management, preferably without needing to reload intero/ghci.
• Better Literate Haskell support: maybe it's just that my config is broken, but I have this problem where lhs mode's Bird-track insert keeps adding leading characters to lines that are not code.
• intero is quite flaky and needs to be reinstalled for each different GHC version, so it becomes quite hard to switch between projects. Once you get it working though, the type previews in the minibuffer are wonderful.
• hoogle and snippets are somewhat usable from emacs, though it would be better if there was a more complete/automatic solution
  • On the subject of snippets, I would like to see some company-coq level snippet insertion for patterns when you do a case over some type.
• I manage goto-def/find usages by using silver-searcher, which works fine. So I'd give that a 🌓 at least
• It would be really nice to have some sort of IntelliSense like thing for autocomplete, possibly hooking into hoogle. It would be especially great for lenses.
• Two columns I would add:
  • integrated error reporting. flycheck really shines here, and many of the above improvements can probably hook into flycheck.
  • REPL + typed holes integration. A basic repl is available, but I would love to see better integration with typed holes and possibly code completion based on them.
• For tooltips, what kinds of information are we considering? There are quite a few things that they can display: types, documentation, completion, usages (e.g. DrRacket), more fancy liquidhaskell things

[NickSeagull]

Great idea! Wanted to take part in this by showcasing HaskellDO, and getting suggestions for implementing them in the future 😄

[fosskers]

Intero doesn't seem to be mentioned yet?

[Gabriella439]

@fosskers The latest version of the chart is being updated at https://github.com/rainbyte/haskell-ide-chart and that does mention intero

[fosskers]

Gotcha, I was only looking at the diff here.

[rainbyte]

I've updated the icons using the 🚲 🚗 🚀 suggestion (thanks @ocharles !), please take a look :)

[rainbyte]

I've tried Leksah before without to much success... Does anyone know what are the current levels of support?

[fosskers]

Yi probably deserves a mention.

[rainbyte]

@fosskers , do you know the state of Yi support?

@Gabriel439 , maybe is would be better to track this specific issues in the other repo (?)

[Gabriella439]

@rainbyte We can use whichever format is more convenient for you to track this discussion

[fosskers]

@rainbyte Unfortunately I've never used it.

[rainbyte]

@Gabriel439, let's track specific requests there, and here how will it be integrated with sotu.

[cnd]

I'd like this link to be added https://atom.io/users/atom-haskell /cc @lierdakil

[lierdakil]

@mpkh, not sure where that link would go here, but sure, if we're talking editor support, it'd be hard to avoid at least mentioning atom-haskell, since it's pretty much responsible for Haskell support in Atom at this point.

Some observations:

• I would argue that Hoogle support in Atom is still immature. Also I'm afraid haskell-hoogle is not actively maintained at the moment.
• Atom has some predefined snippets (via language-haskell): https://github.com/atom-haskell/language-haskell/blob/master/snippets/language-haskell.cson -- and I would argue the system is reasonably mature.
• Might be interesting to add column for in-editor REPL support.