EclipseFP GSoC ’09

Because of many problems I experienced with Darcs, I converted the EclipseFP repository to Git. I really like the clean and simple model and UI of Darcs, and I’m sorry to see it go, but it was simply too slow and too unreliable. Also, I removed all dependencies on Cohatoe. Without further ado, here are the new and improved instructions in case anyone wants to test-drive my current work.

As usual, this assumes that you have GHC, cabal-install, and git. I tested only on Ubuntu 9.4, but there is no reason why it shouldn’t work on other Unix platforms. There may still be some issues on Windows.

1. Get Eclipse Galileo (3.5), the distribution named “Eclipse for RCP/Plug-in Developers”. Extraction equals installation.
2. Get the Scion source:
   git clone git://github.com/ttencate/scion.git
   (My master branch corresponds to nominolo’s multi_proto_server branch.)
3. Build and install Scion, the library as well as the server program:
   cd scion/lib
cabal install
cd ../server
cabal install
4. Get the EclipseFP source:
   git clone git://github.com/ttencate/eclipsefp.git
5. Import all Eclipse projects from these repositories into Eclipse. There are 26, so the Multi Project Import/Export plugin might come in handy.
6. Wait for the build to fail. Yes, that’s right. It will complain about missing files, because ANTLR generated some that Eclipse doesn’t yet know about. Select all projects, right-click and click Refresh, then wait for the build to succeed. (Thanks to Björn Peemöller for pointing this out!)
7. Hit Run, Run Configurations. Add a new launch “Eclipse Application” launch configuration. The default settings for this launch configuration should work, so just click Run. (Previous instructions were wrong; thanks to Axeman6 for pointing this out!)
8. In the new Eclipse window that (hopefully) pops up, set the location of the Scion server via Window, Preferences, Haskell, Scion. If you installed it in a fairly standard location, the Autodetect button should do the trick; otherwise, just Browse.
9. If something doesn’t work, turn on tracing. In the Run Configurations dialog, on the Tracing tab, you can enable tracing options for various plug-ins. These will output to the Console at the bottom of the host Eclipse window. To see the traffic between the Scion client and server, turn on the logs for net.sf.eclipsefp.haskell.scion.client.

A known issue is that you have to save a file before it gets loaded into Scion, so you don’t get type tooltips and go-to-definition until then. This will be resolved in the near future, maybe tomorrow. After nine consecutive days of work, I’m taking a day off now.

Again, please let me know if you tried this. Also let me know if something didn’t work, so I can improve it!

These instructions are outdated. See the new instructions!

My code is now in a sufficiently clean state that I can push it out to the world. For anyone who wants to give it a try, here are the instructions that should get you up and running. This assumes that you have GHC, cabal-install, darcs, and git. I tested only on Ubuntu 9.4, but there is no reason why it should not work on Windows as well.

1. Get my branch of the Scion sources:
   git clone git://github.com/ttencate/scion.git
   (It should also work with nominolo’s original sources.)
2. Build and install Scion, the library as well as the server program:
   cd lib
cabal install
cd ../server
cabal install
3. Get Eclipse Galileo (3.5 RC4 or later), the distribution named “Eclipse for RCP/Plug-in Developers”. Extraction equals installation.
4. Get my branch of the EclipseFP sources:
   darcs get http://code.haskell.org/~ttencate/eclipsefp/
darcs get http://code.haskell.org/~ttencate/cohatoe/
   (Although Cohatoe is probably going to be removed, this version of EclipseFP still depends on it. Build the Cohatoe server if you like; it segfaults on my system.)
5. Import all Eclipse projects from these repositories into Eclipse. There are over forty, so the Multi Project Import/Export plugin might come in handy.
6. Wait for the build to finish, then… Run!
7. In the new Eclipse window that (hopefully) pops up, set the location of the Scion server via Window, Preferences. If you installed it locally, it should be in ~/.cabal/bin/scion_server. (Eclipse does not understand the tilde, so give the full path to your home directory.)

It’s quite some work to get it all up and running, and I probably forgot a step or two. Making the process easier is not currently a priority, but I envision a complete Eclipse release that is easy to set up and has everything you need to get Haskelling quickly.

If you try these steps, and run into any problems, please let me know, so that I can help you out, and improve the instructions and maybe even the code at the same time.

I’m happy to announce that my Google Summer of Code proposal, titled “Extend EclipseFP functionality for Haskell”, has been accepted! For the uninitiated, GSoC is a project in which Google sponsors a number of students each year to work on open source software. During the upcoming three months or so, I will be working on improving EclipseFP. In this blog, I will track my progress.

The target audience for this blog are Haskell programmers, Eclipse developers and any other software developer who happens to be interested. I will try to keep it readable for all interested parties, but it might sometimes get quite technical; in that case, feel free to ask what the hell I’m talking about, or just ignore me. Incidentally, I also just sent out a request to Planet Haskell and Planet Eclipse for this blog to be syndicated.

Anyway, since I target a fairly general audience, I have some explaining to do. In a next post, I describe what my project aims to do, how I want to accomplish it, and why I think it is important. But first, allow me to introduce myself.