Less known haskell-mode

25 August 2012 | Tags: haskell, emacs

haskell-mode is amazing piece of software but unfortunately it lacks documentation which describe available features. Without it only way to discover such features is to look into source code. This is time consuming process although rewarding. I describe here things I found in the current git. Some of functions are not imported by default so module where they defined should be imported manually.

Jumping to import list to add/remove/tweak something is very frequent activity. Finding import is not that difficult they are always in the beginning of the file. Real problem is find place on which you worked before. Functions haskell-navigate-imports and haskell-navigate-imports-return fix that problem. First cycle though import list and second return you to place where you were before.

They are not binded to any key so one have to add them using hook. here is my choice of bindings:

(require 'haskell-navigate-imports)
(add-hook-list 'haskell-mode-hook (lambda () (
  (local-set-key (kbd "M-[") 'haskell-navigate-imports)
  (local-set-key (kbd "M-]") 'haskell-navigate-imports-return)))

Inserting/removing SCC

Another very useful feature is quick adding/removing SCC (Set Cost Centre) annotations which are often necessary to get accurate profiling information. While -auto-all option annotate every top level declaration it’s not always enough.

Just as their names suggest function haskell-mode-insert-scc-at-point and haskell-mode-kill-scc-at-point insert and remove SCC pragmas without tiresome typing. Of course they work best when binded to some key chain.

Indenting/unindenting code blocks at once.

Last item in the list is function for changing indentation of complete code blocks. Here is example of indenting where block by two spaces:

This functionality provided by haskell-move-nested. This function is not binded to anything too nor could used interactively with M-x. Here are bindings suggested by documentation:

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