I recently started using Sublime Text 2 as my main editor for non .net related languages – and I really enjoy it (I think I will pay Mr. Skinner soon – well deserved!).
If you are working with Haskell, then there is a rather good plugin named SublimeHaskell you can use to get automatic compile-error reporting (on save) and an integrated type query and type insert mechanism I quite like.
But in order to get this you have to set up your Haskell project with cabal and install the plugin first.
Install the SublimeHaskell-plugin
The installation itself is very simple once you installed the “Package Control” for Sublime Text 2 (see the link – it’s basically nothing more than running the following snippet inside the Sublime Text 2 console).
import urllib2,os;
pf='Package Control.sublime-package';
ipp=sublime.installed_packages_path();
os.makedirs(ipp) if not os.path.exists(ipp) else None;
urllib2.install_opener(urllib2.build_opener(urllib2.ProxyHandler()));
open(os.path.join(ipp,pf),'wb').write(urllib2.urlopen('http://sublime.wbond.net/'+pf.replace(' ','%20')).read());
print 'Please restart Sublime Text to finish installation'
With the Package Control ready you just have to use the package-install, search for SublimeHaskell and hit return – done.
Setup a basic Haskell Cabal project
Create a folder for your project and create your Haskell source file(s) – here I’m using a very basic one:
-- Greetings.hs -- Copyright (c) 2012 Carsten König -- module Greetings where import System.Environment main :: IO () main = getArgs >>= print . greetings . head greetings s = "Hello! " ++ s
Next create a .cabal file for your project – this is where you tell Cabal how to build/install your files and what dependencies it has, etc.(see the Cabal user guide for additional information):
Name: greetings Version: 0.0 Description: say Hi License: GPL Author: Carsten König Maintainer: Carsten@gettingsharper.de Build-Type: Simple Cabal-Version: >=1.2 Executable greetings Main-is: greetings.hs Build-Depends: base >= 3 && < 5 [/sourcecode] </pre> </div> <p>Important are the name (which names your package), Executable <name> (the –o(utput) name) and Main-is entry.</p> <p>Finally you will need a (very basic) Setup.hs script for cabal:</p> <div style="padding-bottom: 0px; margin: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; display: inline; float: none; padding-top: 0px" id="scid:C89E2BDB-ADD3-4f7a-9810-1B7EACF446C1:d554d603-bad7-4199-8f61-e66344473225" class="wlWriterEditableSmartContent"><pre style=white-space:normal> import Distribution.Simple main = defaultMain
That’s it – now you can install/build your project with Cabal like this:
cabal install --prefix=$HOME--user
Please note: $HOME is where cabal should write your binary output to – it will create/use a “bin”-folder right below $HOME.
That’s it – now whenever you save your file in SublimeText it ghc will run it and possible errors will show like this:
And even better: if you mapped your keybindings in the “Preferences/Key Bindings – User” settings of Sublime Text like this:
{
"command": "haskell_show_type",
"context": "source.haskell",
"keys": ["ctrl+k", "ctrl+h", "ctrl+t"]
},
{
"command": "haskell_insert_type",
"context": "source.haskell",
"keys": ["ctrl+k", "ctrl+h", "ctrl+i"]
}
You can put the cursor on a method, use the sequence <Ctrl>-<K>, <Ctrl>-<H>, <Ctrl>-<T> to see the type of the expression:
Or hit <Ctrl>-<K>, <Ctrl>-<H>, <Ctrl>-<I> to add the type above your method:
Neat isn’t it 
(aside from not noticing String = [Char])