guard-haskell

Guard::Haskell automatically runs your specs

% cabal install hspec
% gem install guard-haskell

For explanation what guard is and how to use it, please refer to the guard manual

guard-haskell uses hspec to run specs and check results, so it makes some assumptions about your code organization and style:

• hspec is your testing framework of choice; therefore,

• hspec-discover organizes your specs

When you type guard in the terminal, guard-haskell fires up a cabal repl instance to talk to, running (parts of) examples when files are modified.

For guard-haskell to be ready to work we need a test suite (conventionally named "spec") defined in the cabal file and a Guardfile (you can get one by running guard init haskell)

Marcin Gryszko has put together a sample project where guard-haskell is set up and can be tinkered with.

A typical haskell project:

guard :haskell do
  watch(%r{test/.+Spec\.l?hs$})
  watch(%r{src/.+\.l?hs$})
  watch(%r{\.cabal$})
end

Another haskell project with a non-standard layout running cabal repl:

cmd = "cabal repl spec --ghc-options='-ignore-dot-ghci -DTEST'"

guard :haskell, all_on_start: true, cmd: cmd do
  watch(%r{test/.+Spec\.l?hs$})
  watch(%r{lib/.+\.l?hs$})
  watch(%r{bin/.+\.l?hs$})
  watch(%r{\.cabal$})
end

Yet another haskell project running ghci as a REPL:

cmd = "cabal exec ghci test/Spec.hs"

guard :haskell, all_on_start: true, all_on_pass: true, cmd: cmd do
  watch(%r{test/.+Spec\.l?hs$})
  watch(%r{src/.+\.l?hs$})
end

It's also advised to have a trivial Gemfile in the repository for bundler exec guard to be able to pick the correct versions of the dependencies:

source "https://rubygems.org"

gem "guard-haskell", "~>2.1"

Guard::Haskell has a bunch of options:

Run all examples on start (default: false).

Run all examples when a failed spec passes again (default: false).

Rerun only failed examples until they pass (default: true).

The command to run in the background as a REPL (default: cabal repl spec)

Unfortunately, testing such applications with guard-haskell is basically impossible because ghci uses GHC API too. Sooner or later you will see something like:

GHCi runtime linker: fatal error: I found a duplicate definition for symbol
   HUnitzm1zi2zi5zi2_TestziHUnitziBase_zdwzdcshowsPrec_slow
whilst processing object file
   /home/maksenov/.cabal/lib/HUnit-1.2.5.2/ghc-7.6.2/HSHUnit-1.2.5.2.o
This could be caused by:
   * Loading two different object files which export the same symbol
   * Specifying the same object file twice on the GHCi command line
   * An incorrect `package.conf' entry, causing some object to be
     loaded twice.
GHCi cannot safely continue in this situation.  Exiting now.  Sorry.

Fragile concurrent access is a known limitation of the GHC API, which hopefully will be eventually fixed.