Posted on: 07/12/2016

This quick 5/10 minute reference aimed towards new users to Spacemacs specifically with Haskell. It’s also used for my own reference.

Terms:

• Project - any directory with a git repository it seems
• Helm - the line dialog interface / plugin
• Intero - A emacs plugin for Haskell
• Haskell-mode - Another alternative emacs plugin for Haskell

File / Project navigation:

• Navigate to recently used file SPC f r
• Navigate to recently used file in project SPC p r
• Navigate to file (fuzzy search) SPC p f
• Switch / select a project (fuzzy search) SPC p p
• Show and navigate to file browser - SPC f T

Searching:

Search for text in all files in project (you need to enter at least 3 chars) SPC / Search using word under cursor (just like the above SPC /) SPC *

Haskell functionality:

• Add type annotation to expression under cursor SPC m h T
• Restart intero - (if you modified the cabal file, it’ll fix old config errors being reported) SPC m i r
• Reformat code in current buffer SPC m f
• Rename an identifier in the current file SPC s e
• Go to definition (you may need to generate a TAGS file) SPC m g g
• Auto format the buffer SPC SPC hindent-reformat-buffer (requires hindent to be installed)

Useful tips:

• Smaller windows / frames / views seem much more responsive. With that in mind, instead of using ‘internal’ splitting for windows I instead make a ‘frame’ SPC w F (essentially another window) which I can then handle more conveniently  with a windows tiling manager. 
• The default theme seems much more laggy than then alternatives SPC T s.
• The little circle with a number in it (bottom left) is the window number. Press SPC N where N in is the number to navigate to that window.
• If you find Emacs ‘frozen’ or busy working on some operation - I usually have a lot of luck cancelling any action with C-G (control g), which is the default Emacs keybinding to cancel an operation (like ESC in Vim).