Summary: New versions of Ghcid and the VS Code extension work even better together.
I've just released Ghcid v0.6.8 and the associated VS Code extension haskell-ghcid v0.2.0. Together they vastly simplify the Ghcid VS Code experience.
Ghcid reads .ghcid files
A new feature in Ghcid is that if there is a .ghcid file in the current directory it will load it as additional arguments. For example, in the Shake repo I have a .ghcid file:
-c "ghci -fno-code -ferror-spans"
Which tells ghcid to not guess at the command (e.g. using stack if you have a .stack-work) but always run ghci -fno-code -ferror-spans. This command works because I have a .ghci file which loads all the necessary files, while -fno-code speeds up compilation and -ferror-spans gives better error highlighting.
Ghcid VS Code starts ghcid
A new feature in the VS Code extension is the action Start Ghcid which starts a new ghcid terminal, writes the output to a temporary file, and uses that output to populate the Problems pane. Importantly, the extension runs ghcid with no command line arguments, so having a sensible .ghcid lets you control what it does.
The effect of these changes is that to start ghcid in VS Code is now a few key strokes, whereas before it required special flags, opening files, running commands etc.
