Format cabal files

[WillSewell]

It would be nice if this extension could format cabal files with cabal format.

Is there a reason (technical or otherwise) why this might not be a good idea?

If you agree that it would be nice to have, it's something I'd be happy to have a go at implementing.

[fendor]

It could be a plugin in Haskell Language Server, e.g. cabal-fmt
I think cabal format itself doesnt do a lot. Also, maybe developers have only stack installed, so it might even not be available.

In my opinion, it would be a very nice addition!

[WillSewell]

Ah I had assumed that vscode-hie-server called Haskell formatters (brittany, ormolu) directly. Does it invoke the via Haskell Language Server? Either way I think this should be consistent.

[jneira]

@WillSewell yeah, the formatting should be added in hls as a plugin. I've added a issue to track it in the hls repo: haskell/haskell-language-server#183

[lukel97]

Closing since this has been moved to haskell-language-server!

[berberman]

cabal-fmt does not seem to export its API to be called on the server side, so I wrote a very simple vscode extension to call it on the command line: https://github.com/berberman/vscode-cabal-fmt

[jneira]

some time ago I had the crazy idea of setup a LSP server for cabal with diagnostics, completions, create non existing modules and trigger cabal commands.
crazy indeed

[ndmitchell]

I think a Cabal LSP is an inevitability - in the fullness of time - it's just a reasonable amount of work for something that is a much smaller amount of benefit (people don't spend that much time editing .cabal files)