Hi all, I've been maintaining a Cabal fork for GHCJS. The GHCJS-specific bits have been relatively stable for a while now, and are feature complete, apart from a few small features that I'll complete later this week.
So I think it's time to discuss merging the branch. This discussion is for the user visible changes only, the implementation details can be discussed later when the code has been cleaned up for the merge (1-2 weeks). I hope that the proposed changes cover most JavaScript packaging/build requirements, but feature requests or questions about support for specific scenarios are welcome! First some background: GHCJS is a cross-compiler, installed as a package. It has its own version number (0.1.0 currently), independent of the GHC version it was built with. After GHCJS and its standard libraries have been installed, it does not require GHC anymore. Cabal's custom setup type is supported by compiling Setup.hs to JavaScript and running it with node.js. In the Cabal branch, GHCJS is treated as a very close relative of GHC. In various places there is support for GHCJS building native code. While this (--native-too mode) is currently disabled in a default installation, it can be enabled again for generating JavaScript and native code from the same Core, for example to allow closure serialization and continuing computations between client and server (not yet implemented!). All Cabal features are supported, including sandboxes. "cabal test" compiles the testsuite of a package and runs it with node.js. "cabal repl" is implemented on the Cabal side, but there is no repl for GHCJS yet, this is planned for the not too far future (with a terminal and browser based front end). The changes: # a new implementation flag: impl(ghcjs) A new implementation flag has been added for GHCJS, using the GHCJS version number. Since GHCJS is a close descendant of GHC, the impl(ghc) flag is also set when something is being built with GHCJS. For example if impl(ghc >= 7.2) -- GHC.Generics support (compiler could be GHCJS) if impl(ghcjs >= 0.1) -- package is being built with GHCJS # ghcjs-options, ghcjs-shared-options, ghcjs-prof-options These new fields behave similar to those for GHC (ghcjs-shared-options only has effect for native-too mode). If not set, the corresponding value from ghc-options, ghc-shared-options, ghc-prof-options is used. (An alternative is to let ghcjs-*-options field append the options to the corresponding ghc-*-options field, instead of replacing them) # new js-sources field A js-sources field is treated like the c-sources field. JS sources of all dependencies of a an executable are collected into a big JavaScript file. GHCJS also outputs some data about the collected files for custom deployment scripts. JS sources are not compiled, but are run through the C preprocessor. Since running the same file through the preprocessor twice is problematic, and it's very useful to be able to set some preprocessor options at link time (for example -DGHCJS_BROWSER, which removes node.js-specific code), the strategy is as follows: - When a library is being installed, the js-sources are copied to the library installation directory, but not run through the preprocessor. the cpp options are saved in the installation dir - When building an executable, the JS-sources are collected. Each JS source is processed with its own saved cpp-options with the cpp-options for building the executable appended. # new JavaScriptFFI extension The extension has been in GHC since 7.8, but it can't be used on non-JavaScript code generators. This change just adds it to the list of known extensions. luite
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