Software

Some of the assignments will be programmed in Haskell, a very cool modern functional programming language.

Downloading and installing Haskell on your machine is easy.  We are using the latest stable release of the Haskell Platform.  Follow directions here.

To create and edit Haskell programs, you can use emacs.  Here is information about installing Haskell mode for emacs.  If you like Vim, see here.  I have also heard that Leksah is a nice visual haskell editor but I've never used it.

If you are using windows, instead of typing "ghci" you may want to type "ghcii.sh" to use the interpreter (apparently this deals with shut down/killing jobs better).  I use the Cygwin shell on my windows machine.  In my .bashrc file, I created an alias:

alias ghci='ghcii.sh'

The Haskell home page is teaming with resources for learning Haskell and communicating with other Haskell lovers.  See here.  To get started, I recommend taking a look at the online book "Learn You a Haskell for Great Good".  In particular, for assignment #2, you should read through the Introduction and the Starting Out Chapter.  You can read online or order a book.

Learn You a Haskell for Great Good is not a great reference book.  Try these sources as well:

• Hoogle, a search engine for Haskell libraries.  Search by type!
• Real World Haskell.  This is also an online book.  If you like it, you are encouraged to buy a copy.
• Haskell home page with a miriad of links to useful stuff.

You will also need to download and install SOE and graphics libraries as follows.

Step 1:  Install OpenGL

"cabal" is a program that comes with the Haskell platform that is helpful in installing new Haskell packages.  On a windows machine, after downloading and installing the Haskell platform, at a shell (I use cygwin) execute:

$ cabal install GLFW

If you get an error the first time, try doing cabal update and then cabal install again:

$ cabal update
$ cabal install GLFW

On Ubuntu 10.04 linux you may have to do this:

$ sudo apt-get install libghc6-opengl-dev
$ sudo apt-get install libxrandr-dev 
$ cabal install GLFW

Step 2: Download and unpack SOE libraries

 Download the SOE libraries from here. You might put the library in a directory for your COS 441 homework (say cos441).  Change to this directory and unpack the SOE libraries:

$ gunzip SOE.tar.gz
$ tar -xf SOE.tar

Step 3:  Test the libraries

Change in to the SOE/src directory.  Run ghci on Draw.lhs.  In the ghci interpreter, type main0 at the prompt.  You should see a window with some images appear.

$ cd SOE/src
$ ghci Draw.lhs
*Draw> main0

Step 4:  Using the SOE libraries in other programs

At the top of your .hs file, use an import statement:

import SOE

When running the Haskell compiler, you must put the SOE libraries in your search path.  Assuming the current directory contains the SOE directory, you can do this by involking ghc (or ghci) as follows.