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Haskell + Nix is the best environment I've ever used for any development. My go-to project manager is this script in the reflex-platform, which is a bit poorly

Haskell + Nix is the best environment I've ever used for any development. My go-to project manager is this script in the reflex-platform, which is a bit poorly named (it will change eventually), because it's actually an environment for doing general cross-platform full stack Haskell development: https://github.com/reflex-frp/reflex-platform/blob/develop/project/default.nix https://github.com/reflex-frp/reflex-platform/blob/develop/p... The learning curve is definitely, shamelessly high. We've been slowly polishing it to make it easy for complete beginners to fully up-to-speed on a project in minutes, but it's a lot of work that happens mostly on weekends. Watch this space!

Buttons840 9y ago
Your go-to project manager is a script? Even if you did not intend it that way that is my impression of the reflex platform. Many have heard about the divide in Haskell package management between cabal-install and stack, but there is also reflex, which seems to rely on running arbitrary bash scripts and using Nix, thus leading to a third method of package management in Haskell. It's a big mess.
- danharaj 9y ago
  Ok so, calling it a script was wrong. It's a nix function which takes arguments specifying various configurations about the project I'm working on, such as any dependency overrides. It then provides a nix derivation which can define shells and compile to whatever platforms I need. No bash scripting is necessary to use this machinery except a convenience script to install Nix if you don't have it. All of the functionality is just leveraging nix's powerful declarative model which easily defines the build artifacts of a project along with the environments necessary to hack on or compile them. This sits on top of cabal and stack, actually. Within a project shell provided by Nix, I'll use cabal to get a repl, for example. But since Nix is handling all the dependency management, cabal doesn't have to do any work in that regard.
  - platz 9y ago
    I find it odd you are recommending this setup to someone who isn't even comfortable with the Haskell language yet, who now must learn this tooling as well.
    - danharaj 9y ago
      I didn't recommend it though! I just described what I use, said it's got a super high learning curve, and we're working on it.
  - Buttons840 9y ago
    I just wish the reflex maintainers would push new changes to Hackage once in awhile. From GitHub I gather that reflex 0.5 was finished over a year ago but that version is not available on Hackage.
KirinDave 9y ago
I couldn't disagree more. Nix doesn't make development easier. In fact, it substantially complicates development to ease open source delivery and client dependency management. These are things that are of questionable value to the Haskell or product dev ecosystem, as people far more often prefer fully static (admittedly large) binaries anyways. And, Nix doesn't work well with existing tools like intero, it requires troubleshooting to get working with ghc. You can pick either stack or cabal and both sort of support Nix, but in every case some tooling will not quite work right. Further, if you're not doing 100% open development, Nix's delivery story is also complicated. It's further challenged for projects using private docker or GitHub repos, where in many cases there is simply no support in Nix. No one does Haskell newbies any favors by suggesting they learn a whole new package expression language and toolchain (that they will be interacting with deeply and constantly) in addition to a language that is full of fundamentally novel concepts and a vast breadth of new libraries, techniques, and a distributed documentation style. Please. Stop recommending Nix to new Haskell users until at least the new porcelain commands are shipped.
- danharaj 9y ago
  I didn't, at all, recommend nix to anybody. What are you responding to?
  - garmaine 9y ago
    > Haskell + Nix is the best environment I've ever used for any development That sounds like a recommendation.
    - ianai 9y ago
      for developing haskell
    - danharaj 9y ago
      That's because it's spefically optimized for my needs: writing Reflex apps. It's what I do for a living. Everyone has different priorities. I know some users who started using Haskell at all with reflex-platform despite the difficulty because it scratched exactly their itch.

Buttons840 9y ago

Your go-to project manager is a script? Even if you did not intend it that way that is my impression of the reflex platform. Many have heard about the divide in Haskell package management between cabal-install and stack, but there is also reflex, which seems to rely on running arbitrary bash scripts and using Nix, thus leading to a third method of package management in Haskell. It's a big mess.

danharaj 9y ago
Ok so, calling it a script was wrong. It's a nix function which takes arguments specifying various configurations about the project I'm working on, such as any dependency overrides. It then provides a nix derivation which can define shells and compile to whatever platforms I need. No bash scripting is necessary to use this machinery except a convenience script to install Nix if you don't have it. All of the functionality is just leveraging nix's powerful declarative model which easily defines the build artifacts of a project along with the environments necessary to hack on or compile them. This sits on top of cabal and stack, actually. Within a project shell provided by Nix, I'll use cabal to get a repl, for example. But since Nix is handling all the dependency management, cabal doesn't have to do any work in that regard.
- platz 9y ago
  I find it odd you are recommending this setup to someone who isn't even comfortable with the Haskell language yet, who now must learn this tooling as well.
  - danharaj 9y ago
    I didn't recommend it though! I just described what I use, said it's got a super high learning curve, and we're working on it.
- Buttons840 9y ago
  I just wish the reflex maintainers would push new changes to Hackage once in awhile. From GitHub I gather that reflex 0.5 was finished over a year ago but that version is not available on Hackage.

KirinDave 9y ago

I couldn't disagree more. Nix doesn't make development easier. In fact, it substantially complicates development to ease open source delivery and client dependency management. These are things that are of questionable value to the Haskell or product dev ecosystem, as people far more often prefer fully static (admittedly large) binaries anyways. And, Nix doesn't work well with existing tools like intero, it requires troubleshooting to get working with ghc. You can pick either stack or cabal and both sort of support Nix, but in every case some tooling will not quite work right. Further, if you're not doing 100% open development, Nix's delivery story is also complicated. It's further challenged for projects using private docker or GitHub repos, where in many cases there is simply no support in Nix. No one does Haskell newbies any favors by suggesting they learn a whole new package expression language and toolchain (that they will be interacting with deeply and constantly) in addition to a language that is full of fundamentally novel concepts and a vast breadth of new libraries, techniques, and a distributed documentation style. Please. Stop recommending Nix to new Haskell users until at least the new porcelain commands are shipped.

danharaj 9y ago
I didn't, at all, recommend nix to anybody. What are you responding to?
- garmaine 9y ago
  > Haskell + Nix is the best environment I've ever used for any development That sounds like a recommendation.
  - ianai 9y ago
    for developing haskell
  - danharaj 9y ago
    That's because it's spefically optimized for my needs: writing Reflex apps. It's what I do for a living. Everyone has different priorities. I know some users who started using Haskell at all with reflex-platform despite the difficulty because it scratched exactly their itch.