Shake: A Better Make

Summary: I have just released Shake, a library that allows you to write build systems in Haskell (think Make, but much better).

At the Haskell Implementors Workshop 2010 I described a Haskell build system named Shake (video here), hoping an implementation would be available "soon". Better late than never, I am delighted to announce that Shake is now available on Hackage. This version is a from scratch reimplementation, based on an improved underlying theory, all completed in my spare time. Several users have already experimented with this version, so it is reasonably robust.

A Simple Example

As a simple example of a Shake build system, let us build the file result.tar from the files listed by result.txt:

import Development.Shake
import Development.Shake.FilePath

main = shake shakeOptions $ do
    want ["result.tar"]
    "*.tar" *> \out -> do
        contents <- readFileLines $ replaceExtension out "txt"
        need contents
        system' "tar" $ ["-cf",out] ++ contents

We start by importing the modules defining both Shake and routines for manipulating FilePath values. We define main to call shake with the default shakeOptions. As the second argument to shake, we provide a set of rules. There are two common forms of rules, want to specify target files, and *> to define a rule which builds a file pattern. We use want to require that after the build completes the file result.tar should be ready.

The *.tar rule describes how to build files with the extension .tar, including result.tar. We readFileLines on result.txt, after changing the .tar extension to .txt. We read each line into the variable contents -- being a list of the files that should go into result.tar. Next, we depend (need) all the files in contents. If any of these files change, the rule will be repeated. Finally we call the tar program. If either result.txt changes, or any of the files listed by result.txt change, then result.tar will be rebuilt.

If you are interested in writing a build system using Shake, I suggest you read the documentation. One thing noted in the documentation is that if ghc --make or cabal is capable of building your project, use that instead. Custom build systems are necessary for many complex projects, but many projects are not complex.

As an example of how to do this task in Make, see this StackOverflow question. I'll cover the differences and similarities with other build tools in a forthcoming blog post.