[Haskell-iPhone] Haskell RTS on iOS

[Peter Jones]

"Stephen Blackheath [to GHC-iPhone]"
<likeliest.complexions.stephen at blacksapphire.com> writes:
> The status is that we have a working GHC-iOS compiler, and various
> attempts at Android but nothing easily useable - though I expect that
> to change very soon. Work is underway at the moment by quite a few
> people to finish off the rough edges of cross-compiling. So at this
> stage, if you want to use Haskell on mobile devices, you will still
> have to get your hands a bit dirty.

I don't mind getting my hands dirty, especially when the ghc-ios Wiki
and this mailing list seem so helpful.

> The performance of the runtime system should be very good now that we
> have a "registerised" code generator using LLVM (GHC's generated code
> is based entirely on gotos and doesn't use normal calls and call
> stacks, and this necessitated specific changes to LLVM). I haven't
> done any great measurements, though. Just remember that mobile device
> CPUs are significantly slower than desktop PCs, though this gap is
> closing.

All very good things to know, thank you.

> So contrary to the myth, space leaks aren't random, and won't pop up
> on a new platform. You only need to test your program on one
> platform. Due to difficulty of profiling on a cross-compiled platform,
> however, you will need to write your program so it can be tested (and
> therefore profiled) on a PC.

That's manageable.  I plan on doing all my main development on a PC
running Linux and then add each platform's native UI on top.

>> Thanks in advance, and thanks for all the work on ghc-ios!
>
> No worries, and I hope there's been something useful in this email!

Very useful, thank you.

-- 
Peter Jones --- Love to Develop
303-219-0226 http://devalot.com