John, Do you use jhc when you develop jhc? I.e., does it compile itself. For me, this is the litmus test of when a compiler has become usable. I mean, if even the developers of a compiler don't use it themselves, why should anyone else? :)
-- Lennart On Wed, Nov 11, 2009 at 3:37 AM, John Meacham <j...@repetae.net> wrote: > On Tue, Nov 10, 2009 at 07:41:54PM -0800, Philippos Apolinarius wrote: >> I discovered a Haskell compiler that generates very small and fast >> code. In fact, it beats Clean. It has the following properties: > > Excellent. that was my goal ;) > >> 1 --- One can cross-compile programs easily. For instance, here is how I >> generated code for Windows: >> >> jhc --cross -mwin32 genetic.hs -o genetic > > Yup. This was a major goal. compiling for iPhones and embedded arches is > just as easy assuming you have a gcc toolchain set up. (at least with > the hacked iPhone SDK.. I have never tried it with the official one) > >> >> 2 -- It seems to be quite complete. >> >> 3 -- However, it often compiles a file, but the program fails to run. >> >> I have the following questions about it: >> >> 1 -- How active is the team who is writing the JHC compiler? > > Hi, I am the main contributor, but others are welcome and several have > made signifigant contributions. Development tends to be spurty. A lot of > work will get done in a short amount of time, this generally corresponds > to when an external contributor gets involved and the back and forth > helps stimulate patches on my part to complement theirs. > > Although I have not been able to devote a lot of my time to jhc in the > past, hopefully this will change in the not to distant future and I will > be able to work on it full time. > > >> 2 -- Is it complete Haskell? The author claims that it is; it compiled >> all programs that I wrote, but that does not mean much, because my >> programs are quite simple. > > It does Haskell 98 and several extensions, which is pretty much what GHC > does. However, it does not implement the same set of extensions as GHC > so this causes issues as a lot of people use GHC extensions extensively. > > I plan on supporting all of Haskell' of course, and the popular GHC > extensions to help compatibility. Not all are implemented. > >> 3 -- Why the Haskell community almost never talks about JHC? > > Part of it is that I am not very good at advocacy. I don't always > post announcements on the main haskell lists figuring the interested > parties are on the jhc list already. I do try to make jhc good, fast, > and usable, I always hoped someone better at advocacy than me would join > the project :) In truth, I think the spurty nature of development also > affects this, the list will be quite for a long time with a flurry of > development lasting a few weeks occasionally inspiring some discussion > in the other groups. > > In any case, I am glad you liked what you found! please join the mailing > list for jhc if you are interested in its development or using it. > > John > > > > -- > John Meacham - ⑆repetae.net⑆john⑈ - http://notanumber.net/ > _______________________________________________ > Haskell-Cafe mailing list > Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org > http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe > _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe