haskell-gi

Generate Haskell bindings for GObject Introspection capable libraries.

Using the generated bindings

The most recent versions of the generated bindings are available from hackage. To install, start by making sure that you have a recent (1.24 or later) version of cabal-install:

$ cabal install cabal-install
$ cabal --version
cabal-install version 1.24.0.0
compiled using version 1.24.0.0 of the Cabal library 

Then install the bindings you need. For instance, for the gtk+ bindings you can do:

$ cabal install gi-gtk

(Note: you may need to run this command twice, due to a bug in cabal).

That's it! Here is an example "Hello World" program:

{-# LANGUAGE OverloadedStrings, OverloadedLabels #-}

import qualified GI.Gtk as Gtk
import Data.GI.Base

main :: IO ()
main = do
  Gtk.init Nothing

  win <- new Gtk.Window [ #title := "Hi there" ]

  on win #destroy Gtk.mainQuit

  button <- new Gtk.Button [ #label := "Click me" ]

  on button #clicked (set button [ #sensitive := False,
                                   #label := "Thanks for clicking me" ])

  #add win button

  #showAll win

  Gtk.main

This program uses the new OverloadedLabels extension in GHC 8.0, so make sure you have a recent enough version of GHC installed. To run this program, copy it to a file (hello.hs, say), and then

$ ghc -o hello hello.hs
$ ./hello

For a more involved example, see for instance this WebKit example. Further documentation can be found in the Wiki.

Binding to new libraries

It should be rather easy to generate bindings to any library with gobject-introspection support, see the examples in the bindings folder. Pull requests appreciated!