queertypes / stack

The Haskell Tool Stack

The Haskell Tool Stack

stack is a cross-platform program for developing Haskell projects. It is aimed at Haskellers both new and experienced.

It features:

• Installing GHC automatically, in an isolated location.
• Installing packages needed for your project.
• Building your project.
• Testing your project.
• Benchmarking your project.

How to install

Downloads are available by operating system:

• Windows
• OS X
• Ubuntu
• Debian
• CentOS / Red Hat / Amazon Linux
• Fedora
• Arch Linux
• Linux (general)

Upgrade instructions

Note: if you are using cabal-install to install stack, you may need to pass a constraint to work around a Cabal issue: cabal install --constraint 'mono-traversable >= 0.9' stack.

How to use

Go into a Haskell project directory and run stack build. If everything is already configured, this will:

• Download the package index.
• Download and install all necessary dependencies for the project.
• Build and install the project.

You may be prompted to run some of the following along the way:

• stack new to create a brand new project.
• stack init to create a stack configuration file for an existing project. stack will figure out what Stackage release (LTS or nightly) is appropriate for the dependencies.
• stack setup to download and install the correct GHC version in an isolated location (default ~/.stack) that won't interfere with any system-level installations. (For information on installation paths, please use the stack path command.)

If you just want to install an executable using stack, then all you have to do is stack install <package-name>.

Run stack for a complete list of commands.

How to contribute

This assumes that you have already installed a version of stack, and have git installed.

1. Clone stack from git with git clone https://github.com/commercialhaskell/stack.git.
2. Enter into the stack folder with cd stack.
3. Build stack using a pre-existing stack install with stack setup && stack build.
4. Once stack finishes building, check the stack version with stack --version. Make sure the version is the latest.
5. Look for issues tagged with newcomer and awaiting-pr labels

Build from source as a one-liner:

git clone https://github.com/commercialhaskell/stack.git && cd stack && stack setup && stack build

Complete guide to stack

This repository also contains a complete guide to using stack, covering all of the most common use cases.

Questions, Feedback, Discussion

• For frequently asked questions about detailed or specific use-cases, please see the FAQ.
• For general questions, comments, feedback and support please write to the stack mailing list.
• For bugs, issues, or requests please open an issue.
• When using Stack Overflow, please use the haskell-stack tag.

Why stack?

stack is a project of the Commercial Haskell group, spearheaded by FP Complete. It is designed to answer the needs of commercial Haskell users, hobbyist Haskellers, and individuals and companies thinking about starting to use Haskell. It is intended to be easy to use for newcomers, while providing the customizability and power experienced developers need.

While stack itself has been around since June of 2015, it is based on codebases used by FP Complete for its corporate customers and internally for years prior. stack is a refresh of that codebase combined with other open source efforts like stackage-cli to meet the needs of users everywhere.

A large impetus for the work on stack was a large survey of people interested in Haskell, which rated build issues as a major concern. The stack team hopes that stack can address these concerns.