Stack 0.1 – A new build tool for Haskell

https://www.fpcomplete.com/blog/2015/06/stack-0-1-release

by mcbuilder • 11 years ago

59 55 11 years ago

fpcomplete.com

hoverbear• 11 years ago

Page does not exist.

agumonkey• 11 years ago

Works for me even though archive.is (https://archive.is/GZLs2) doesn't see it.

here's the announcement text: http://pastebin.com/aPLq5ySG

angerman• 11 years ago

Didn't work the first time either. But visiting the site a second time revealed the article.

fiatjaf• 11 years ago

Works here also.

cies6• 11 years ago

While Stack is still young software it is amazing to see how Haskell went from having sub-par build tooling, to something that pretty much trumphs all build tooling I've ever worked with. And all of this happened in about one or two years.

I totally see how this language and it's ecosystem are going to be the next big thing in programming. Ultra highlevel and very compact code that compiles to relatively fast native code. Purely functional and strong type system guarantees to help refactoring the most complex codebases.

It is a hell of a secret weapon for startups.

demilicious• 11 years ago

Could you explain this a little more? What new build tooling has been developed for Haskell recently (other than the parent link)?

One of the things that keeps me from revisiting Haskell was the aforementioned subpar build tooling. That's one of the reasons I'm enjoying Golang so much.

cies6• 11 years ago

Sure...

Stackage: curated sets of packages that are known to work together.

LTS Haskell: Stackage + pinning to a GHC version + seperating non-breaking upgrades (minor LTS version increases) from breaking ones (major increases).

SSL downloading.

Stack: also downloading/building of GHC if it does not exists, understands mega-repo's (many packages in one git repo), eases working with shared local pools of packages, eases working with dependencies that are not in Stackage/LTS, and more that I probably forget.

A more detailed explanation of the merits of Stack can be found in this video: http://begriffs.com/posts/2015-06-22-haskell-stack-build-too...

bjt• 11 years ago

'cabal sandbox' came out like, a year ago? That was a huge improvement for my Haskell development experience, allowing local isolated environments like you get from npm or virtualenv.

kazinator• 11 years ago

Trumps all build tooling? Can I take any GNU Make project and replace the build tool with Stack?

cies6• 11 years ago

I notice now I cut some corners. I meant language specific tooling for resolving/downloading dependencies, building and installing.

Sorry for the confusion.

cauterize• 11 years ago

No, but you might with Shake: http://shakebuild.com/

zak_mc_kracken6• 11 years ago

It is a hell of a secret weapon for startups.

So secret that hardly any startups use it and hardly anyone has open positions for Haskell jobs...

You have your work cut out for you :-)

codygman4• 11 years ago

hardly anyone has open positions for Haskell jobs

They do exist (many but not all are mainly Haskell positions):

http://jobsearch.monster.com/search/programmer_5?q=haskell

http://careers.stackoverflow.com/jobs?searchTerm=haskell

mightybyte5• 11 years ago

JP Morgan [1], Standard Chartered [2], Skedge.me [3], Soostone [4], and Facebook [5] have all advertised open Haskell positions recently. And those are just the ones that come to mind immediately.

[1] https://mail.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell-cafe/2015-June/12...

[2] https://donsbot.wordpress.com/2015/06/10/haskell-dev-role-in...

[3] http://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/32ydm7/haskell_jobs...

[4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9473292

[5] http://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/2useoq/haskell_oppo...

mightybyte5• 11 years ago

I totally see how this language and it's ecosystem are going to be the next big thing in programming.

I agree and it seems like 2015 has seen a substantial increase in interest in Haskell. The NY Haskell meetup group has seen a steadily increasing number of group joins this year. Both of the last two months have had a record number of new signups and have been more than double the median. I don't know what is causing the increased interest, but it's clearly not an isolated spike.

LukeHoersten2• 11 years ago

We've seen big growth and interest in the Chicago Haskell group as well.

cies6• 11 years ago

Also the http://reddit.com/r/haskell increased a lot over the last few years.

mrcactu5• 11 years ago

is this supposed to replace Cabal?

dragonwriter• 11 years ago

It relies on cabal-the-library. It replaces cabal-the-tool.

mcbuilder• 11 years ago

It's basically a drop in replacement for `cabal-install`, while leveraging off Cabal the library, which means package description files don't need to be rewritten, i.e. your old cabal package will still work.

It's a huge departure from using cabal-install. Faster project setup time, and not having to worry about managing sandboxes, compiling a new sandbox, or getting stuck in cabal hell.

So, yes, you could look at it as a cabal-install rewrite.

mightybyte5• 11 years ago

For some use cases it might work as a replacement, but it doesn't have a dependency solver so I don't think you can really say it's a serious general-purpose cabal replacement. It's more like build porcelain for cases where you already have your package's whole dependency tree locked down.

snoyberg• 11 years ago

This is false, see the `stack solver` and `stack init --solver` commands. Currently it's using cabal's dependency solver under the surface, but there is work in progress (by multiple parties) to implement a new SAT-based solver, see: https://github.com/commercialhaskell/stack/issues/116

beefsack• 11 years ago

URL appears to have changed to https://www.fpcomplete.com/blog/2015/06/announcing-first-pub...

rrradical2• 11 years ago

I assume this is too green to work with cross-compilation (to arm built from x86, for example), but does anyone know if that support is planned?

I did some haskell work with iphone in the past, and it was a pain to go from testing locally to testing on device. Everything (including dependencies) had to be rebuilt. This would solve my multipackage woes, but only if it could separate platforms.

codygman4• 11 years ago

I've been using docker for cross compilation.

rrradical2• 11 years ago

That...is a great idea. Thanks!

kyllo• 11 years ago

Stack is freaking awesome (brings compile times down dramatically, prevents cabal hell) but I'm sad that it doesn't seem to work with emacs haskell-mode and yesod-bin yet (because those tools depend on a .cabal dir). Stack support for those tools can't come soon enough!

Stack 0.1 – A new build tool for Haskell

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