* [`hie-bios`](https://github.com/mpickering/hie-bios) for determining where your files are, what are their dependencies, what extensions are enabled and so on;
* A bunch of plugins that haven't yet been written, e.g. [`hie-hlint`](https://github.com/ndmitchell/hlint) and [`hie-ormolu`](https://github.com/tweag/ormolu), to choose which features you want;
* [`haskell-lsp`](https://github.com/alanz/haskell-lsp) for sending those messages to a [Language Server Protocol (LSP)](https://microsoft.github.io/language-server-protocol/) server;
* An extension for your editor. We provide a [VS Code extension](https://code.visualstudio.com/api) as `extension` in this directory, although the components work in other LSP editors too (see below for instructions using Emacs).
Next, check that `ghcide` is capable of loading your code. Change to the project directory and run `ghcide`, which will try and load everything using the same code as the IDE, but in a way that's much easier to understand. For example, taking the example of [`shake`](https://github.com/ndmitchell/shake), running `ghcide` gives some error messages and warnings before reporting at the end:
Of the 158 files in Shake, as of this moment, 152 can be loaded by the IDE, but 6 can't (error messages for the reasons they can't be loaded are given earlier). The failing files are all prototype work or test output, meaning I can confidently use Shake.
The `ghcide` executable mostly relies on [`hie-bios`](https://github.com/mpickering/hie-bios) to do the difficult work of setting up your GHC environment. If it doesn't work, see [the `hie-bios` manual](https://github.com/mpickering/hie-bios#readme) to get it working. My default fallback is to figure it out by hand and create a `direct` style [`hie.yaml`](https://github.com/ndmitchell/shake/blob/master/hie.yaml) listing the command line arguments to load the project.
If you don't already have [MELPA](https://melpa.org/#/) package installation configured, visit MELPA [getting started](https://melpa.org/#/getting-started) page to get set up. Then, install [`use-package`](https://melpa.org/#/use-package). Finally, add the following lines to your `.emacs`.
## History and relationship to other Haskell IDE's
The code behind `ghcide` was originally developed by [Digital Asset](https://digitalasset.com/) as part of the [DAML programming language](https://github.com/digital-asset/daml). DAML is a smart contract language targeting distributed-ledger runtimes, based on [GHC](https://www.haskell.org/ghc/) with custom language extensions. The DAML programming langauge has [an IDE](https://webide.daml.com/), and work was done to separate off a reusable Haskell-only IDE (what is now `ghcide`) which the [DAML IDE then builds upon](https://github.com/digital-asset/daml/tree/master/compiler/damlc). Since that time, there have been various [non-Digital Asset contributors](https://github.com/digital-asset/ghcide/graphs/contributors), in addition to continued investment by Digital Asset.
The Haskell community [has](https://github.com/DanielG/ghc-mod) [various](https://github.com/chrisdone/intero) [IDE](https://github.com/rikvdkleij/intellij-haskell) [choices](http://leksah.org/), but the one that has been gathering momentum is [`haskell-ide-engine`](https://github.com/haskell/haskell-ide-engine#readme). Our project owes a debt of gratitude to the `haskell-ide-engine`. We reuse libraries from their ecosystem, including [`hie-bios`](https://github.com/mpickering/hie-bios#readme) (a likely future environment setup layer in `haskell-ide-engine`), [`haskell-lsp`](https://github.com/alanz/haskell-lsp#readme) and [`lsp-test`](https://github.com/bubba/lsp-test#readme) (the `haskell-ide-engine` [LSP protocol](https://microsoft.github.io/language-server-protocol/) pieces). We make heavy use of their contributions to GHC itself, in particular the work to make GHC take string buffers rather than files. While `ghcide` is not a part of `haskell-ide-engine`, we feel it _could_ form the core of a future version - but such decisions are up to the `haskell-ide-engine` contributors.
The best summary of the architecture of `ghcide` is available [this talk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cijsaeWNf2E&list=PLxxF72uPfQVRdAsvj7THoys-nVj-oc4Ss) ([slides](https://ndmitchell.com/downloads/slides-making_a_haskell_ide-07_sep_2019.pdf)), given at [MuniHac 2019](https://munihac.de/2019.html). However, since that talk the project has renamed from `hie-core` to `ghcide`, and the repo has moved to [this location](https://github.com/digital-asset/ghcide/).