Build Tool

We use Stack as our build tool, and HPack for package configuration. Dependencies, test modules, executables to build, compiler flags, and the like are found in packag.yaml.

Intero

If you install Intero, you'll get a bunch of nice editor/IDE features out of the box 🚀​

Language Extensions

GHC (the main Haskell compiler) has a number of "language extensions" available. These are things that are available in GHC, but not yet in the language spec (which is updated every 10 years or so). These are primarily to modernize to the lanaguge, and make your life much easier. For reference, here's the list of extension that we have enabled standard.

ApplicativeDo, BangPatterns, BlockArguments, ConstraintKinds, DataKinds, DeriveAnyClass, DeriveFoldable, DeriveFunctor, DeriveGeneric, DeriveLift, DeriveTraversable, DerivingStrategies, FlexibleContexts, FlexibleInstances, FunctionalDependencies, GADTs, GeneralizedNewtypeDeriving, KindSignatures, LambdaCase, LiberalTypeSynonyms, MultiParamTypeClasses, MultiWayIf, NamedFieldPuns, NoImplicitPrelude, NoMonomorphismRestriction, OverloadedStrings, OverloadedLabels, OverloadedLists, RankNTypes, RecordWildCards, ScopedTypeVariables, StandaloneDeriving, TupleSections, TypeSynonymInstances, TemplateHaskell, TypeOperators, ViewPatterns

Wow, that looks like a long list! Most of these enable quality-of-life improvements with new syntax or remove boilerplate. Almost all of these are used widely in industry, and are considered totally safe to use (and in some cases, it's masochistic to not have them enabled, like OverloadedStrings). You can read up more on these at the extremely informative What I Wish I Knew When Learning Haskell.

We mention this here becasue you may find reference to them while on Stack Overflow, or some syntax that's not available in older references like the now woefully out-of-date Learn You a Haskell for Great Good (which I'm not even going to link).

Project Structure

A project is broken into a reusable library, executables, tests, and benchmarks.

Library

You will often see library code in a /src directory. We're following the other convention, which is to place library code in a directory shocking titled... library.

Quality

Quaity checks live in /test. We have several kinds of tests:

Benchmarks

Benchmarks live at /bench

Executables

If a project contains a single executable, it tends to live in /app or /exe. Since our project contains multiple executables, we use the name of the executable itself (for example /fission-web).

Where to Find Packages

Stackage

We use Stackage for nearly all packages. These are stable packages, grouped into "Stack resolver versions", so you don't need to worry about version numbers. Just stick them in your dependencies, and everything just works™.

package.yaml
dependencies:
  - aeson
  - aeson-casing
  - base
  - [...]

Searching in Stackage can be done by name, or by type signature, which is very useful.

Hackage

You can find even more packages on Hackage. It's a very similar process as with Stackage, but to include packages

stack.yaml
extra-deps:
- alex-3.2.4
- ekg-wai-0.1.0.3
- happy-1.19.10
- servant-multipart-0.11.4
- tasty-rerun-1.1.14

​