[Haskell-cafe] Some random newbie questions

[Shae Matijs Erisson]

Benjamin Pierce <bcpierce at cis.upenn.edu> writes:

> * What are the relative advantages of Hugs and GHC, beyond the obvious (Hugs
>   is smaller and easier for people not named Simon to modify, while GHC is a
>   real compiler and has the most up-to-date hacks to the type checker)?  Do
>   people generally use one or the other for everything, or are they similar
>   enough to use Hugs at some moments and GHC at others?

Hugs is written in C, it's easy to build and doesn't use much
ram/cpu/drivespace. 
GHC can be difficult to bootstrap for less popular setups (IBM Mainframes,
BeOS, Amiga, etc), and both building and using GHC can eat ram/cpu/drivespace.
On the feature side, Hugs is just that, a Haskell User's Gofer System.
GHC is more like a hotrod research compiler, there's always some neat new
feature in CVS that does really cool stuff. (ie Software Transactional Memory)
If you have a Sharp Zaurus, Hugs will work but GHC won't. 

> * HUnit and QuickCheck seem to offer very nice -- but different -- testing
>   facilities.  Has anyone thought of combining them?  (In fact, is HUnit
>   actually used?  The last revision seems to be a couple of years ago.)

I hacked up a test-first version of QuickCheck that saves failing test cases
and checks them again on the next run. That is effectively a combination of
HUnit and QuickCheck.
I sent in my code when the call for QuickCheck2 ideas happened. I know there
was a recent presentation on QC2 at Chalmers, but I don't know if the
test-first idea will be integrated, or when QC2 will be released.
My code is an inflexible hack I wrote as a proof of concept, it's definitely
not ready for real use.

PS. TaPL was great, on #haskell we call it "The Brick Book" 
    Does it already have a standard nickname?
-- 
Shae Matijs Erisson - http://www.ScannedInAvian.com/ - Sockmonster once said:
You could switch out the unicycles for badgers, and the game would be the same.