Contributing to Alex
Source Code Repository
Alex is hosted on GitHub. As previously discussed in Reporting issues with Alex, we use the built-in GitHub issue tracker for Alex. We also use GitHub pull requests for managing changes; feel free to submit them!
Repo Layout
src
: The source code for Alex itselfdoc
: The documentationexamples
: Various examples of using Alex
Contributor Build Instructions
Alex is built using GHC and Cabal Install (version 2.0 or later). Make sure they are already installed first.
Since Alex itself is implemented in terms of an Alex scanner, bootstrapping Alex is a bit tricky:
You need to have the build-tools alex
and happy
manually installed;
either via your system package manager distribution, the Haskell Platform, or e.g. via (run this outside the Git repository!):
$ cabal install alex happy
which installs them into ${HOME}/.cabal/bin
by default.
(make sure they are in your $PATH
for the next steps!)
Variant A
You can install alex
simply by invoking:
$ cabal install
from inside the Git folder.
Variant B
Alternatively, you can use the Makefile
which automates the steps of producing a self-contained pre-bootstrapped source distribution with pre-generated lexer/scanners:
$ make sdist
$ cabal install dist/alex-*.tar.gz
For convenience, there is also a make sdist-test
target which builds the source source tarball and runs the test-suite from within the source dist.