Getting Started

Installing the toolchain

For a more detailed installation instructions with detailed explanations, refer the toolchain section in the developer guide.
If using an M1 mac, see additional instructions.

Installing ghcup

To install GHC and Cabal we recommend using ghcup, which is a utility for installing various applications in the Haskell toolchain. Please see the linked documentation for instructions on how to launch the ghcup installer.

Once the installer is launched, you will be asked a series of questions. The following is a rough guide to the recommended answers for these questions.

  • Do you want ghcup to automatically add the required PATH variable to your shell startup file? This is optional. Either (i) you should choose the "Yes, prepend" option and the installer will add a line of code to the end of your shell startup file (e.g. $HOME/.bashrc, $HOME/.zshrc, etc.) appropriately modifying the PATH environmental variable, or (ii) you should choose the "No" option and manually add some code to your shell startup file performing an equivalent modification to PATH. In the latter case you should prepend $HOME/.cabal/bin and $HOME/.ghcup/bin to PATH.

  • Do you want to install haskell-language-server (HLS)? Select "Yes".

  • Do you want to install stack? There is no harm in selecting "Yes", but it is not necessary for the asclepias project. So in other words, you can select "No" and download it at a later time if desired.

Once installed use ghcup --help to see a description of all the available commands.

Installing the Haskell toolchain

Once ghcup is installed, run the following commands:

ghcup install ghc 8.10.7
ghcup install cabal
ghcup install hls

Set up your development environment

These instructions assume that you do not currently have an IDE, or even know what that is. If you already have a favorite IDE, the advanced instructions in our developer guide may be more useful
These instructions assume that you have installed the Haskell toolchain.

  1. Download and install Visual Studio Code.

  2. Install the Haskell extension.

  3. TODO: how to set up the haskell plugin

  4. TODO: how to check that things are working

Next Steps

Once you have the toolchain and development environment installed, next steps may include: