hbb: Extraordinary Haskell programming

This project aims to create a tool which should be easily embeddable in text editors to assist them to provide extraordinary editing features for the Haskell programming language. To archieve this, the tool will is based on the library of the Glasgow Haskell Compiler (GHC) and the tool ghc-mod which already improves text editors with a certain number of features.

The name hbb is short for haskell busy bee and should remind one of the programmers using it.

The central library of hbb has been split apart into its own cabal package which has the name libhbb. This library also ships an executable (named libhbb-cli) which has reduced functionality compared to hbb. hbb is able to provide much more functionality because it builds upon the library of ghc-mod. Altogether the following dependencies materialize:

          +---------+
          |   hbb   |
          +---------+
           | (exe) |
           |       |
           v       v
  +---------+     +--------+
  | ghc-mod |     | libhbb |
  +---------+     +--------+
  (lib & exe)     (lib & exe)

hbb as well as ghc-mod (as well as libhbb-cli) have different mode of operations which are dictated by a command line parameter. The target of hbb is it to extend ghc-mod which has currently (as of 2014-09-23) a total of 16 modes (including things like help) by certain things.

One outstanding feature hbb wants to add is the ability to replace the occurence of a function name by an inlined version of its body (its lambda representation).

Extract from the hbb help

hbb version 0.4.0.0 compiled by GHC 7.6.3
Usage:
  hbb list [-g GHC_opt1 -g GHC_opt2 ...] [-l] [-d]
  hbb lang [-l]
  hbb flag [-l]
  hbb browse [-g GHC_opt1 -g GHC_opt2 ...] [-l] [-o] [-d] [-q] [<package>:]<module> [[<package>:]<module> ...]
  hbb check  [-g GHC_opt1 -g GHC_opt2 ...] <HaskellFiles...>
  hbb expand [-g GHC_opt1 -g GHC_opt2 ...] <HaskellFiles...>
  hbb debug  [-g GHC_opt1 -g GHC_opt2 ...] 
  hbb info   [-g GHC_opt1 -g GHC_opt2 ...] <HaskellFile> <module> <expression>
  hbb type   [-g GHC_opt1 -g GHC_opt2 ...] <HaskellFile> <module> <line-no> <column-no>
  hbb split  [-g GHC_opt1 -g GHC_opt2 ...] <HaskellFile> <module> <line-no> <column-no>
  hbb sig    [-g GHC_opt1 -g GHC_opt2 ...] <HaskellFile> <module> <line-no> <column-no>
  hbb refine [-g GHC_opt1 -g GHC_opt2 ...] <HaskellFile> <module> <line-no> <column-no> <expression>
  hbb auto   [-g GHC_opt1 -g GHC_opt2 ...] <HaskellFile> <module> <line-no> <column-no>
  hbb find <symbol>
  hbb lint [-h opt] <HaskellFile>
  ---------- modes supported by libhbb ------------
  hbb locate         [-g GHC_opt1 -g GHC_opt2 ...]               <HaskellFile> <line-no> <column-no>
  hbb inline         [-g GHC_opt1 -g GHC_opt2 ...] [--adapt-ind] <HaskellFile> <line-no> <column-no> [<line-no> <column-no>]
  hbb smart-inline   [-g GHC_opt1 -g GHC_opt2 ...] [--adapt-ind] <HaskellFile> <line-no> <column-no> [<line-no> <column-no>]
  hbb occurrences-of [-g GHC_opt1 -g GHC_opt2 ...]               <HaskellFile> <line-no> <column-no> [<HaskellFile> ...]
  hbb exprtype       [-g GHC_opt1 -g GHC_opt2 ...]               <HaskellFile> <expression>
  hbb apply-to       [-g GHC_opt1 -g GHC_opt2 ...] [-q] <Function of String to String> <Subject of String>
  --- end of modes supported by libhbb ------------
  hbb root
  hbb doc <module>
  hbb boot
  hbb version
  hbb help

<module> for "info" and "type" is not used, anything is OK.
It is necessary to maintain backward compatibility.

  -l           --tolisp              print as a list of Lisp
  -h hlintOpt  --hlintOpt=hlintOpt   hlint options
  -g ghcOpt    --ghcOpt=ghcOpt       GHC options
  -v           --verbose             verbose
  -o           --operators           print operators, too
  -d           --detailed            print detailed info
  -q           --qualified, --quiet  show qualified names / suppress warning (quiet) in mode apply-to
  -b sep       --boundary=sep        specify line separator (default is Nul string)
               --adapt-ind           Adapt the indentation of non-first lines to the (possibly higher) ind of the target environment