Haskell IDE Using Atom and Stack

Due to the strength of its type system, Haskell lends itself to a great IDE experience. However, that IDE experience has not been as easy to come by for Haskell as it has been for other languages.

Here's how to setup a decent IDE experience for Haskell using Atom and the new stack build tool.

1. Get Atom.
2. Get stack on your PATH. (As of version 0.1.5.0, the 32-bit build is more stable than the 64-bit build.)
3. Install dependencies via stack install ghc-mod cabal-helper hlint stylish-haskell
4. The command output will tell you it is installing binaries to a particular folder. Add this path to your PATH or copy the files to somewhere else on your PATH.
5. Install the ide-haskell Atom package and its dependency packages. At the time of writing, the dependency packages are:
   • haskell-ghc-mod
   • language-haskell
   • autocomplete-haskell
   • ide-haskell-cabal

Kinds of Hard

There are two kinds of "hard" in programming, the "I need to learn more" kind and the "I need to debug more" kind. Both of them start with "Huh? I don't get it." But one of them never comes back. Choose wisely.