[GHC] #7933: JavaScript Cmm backend

[GHC]

#7933: JavaScript Cmm backend
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    Reporter:  bosu              |       Owner:                  
        Type:  feature request   |      Status:  patch           
    Priority:  normal            |   Milestone:                  
   Component:  Compiler          |     Version:  7.6.3           
    Keywords:                    |          Os:  Unknown/Multiple
Architecture:  Unknown/Multiple  |     Failure:  None/Unknown    
  Difficulty:  Unknown           |    Testcase:                  
   Blockedby:                    |    Blocking:                  
     Related:                    |  
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Comment(by simonpj):

 Interesting, thank you.  Some thoughts:

  * I'd be happy to have a JS back end for GHC.  As you say, it's pretty
 non-invasive, which is good.

  * You aren't the first to attack this problem; see
 [http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/The_JavaScript_Problem the Haskell
 wiki JS page].  How does your solution differ?  I'd love to see comments
 from Fay's author, GHCJS's author etc.  Maybe you can make common cause
 with some of them to get JS into GHC?

  * More generally, before adopting it for GHC, I'd ideally like to see a
 group of enthusiasts saying "yes, this is the way to go".  I'm not well
 equipped to make a critical assessment from a JS point of view.

  * You could start a GHC Trac Wiki page describing the implementation in
 overview, so someone could figure out how it works (eg including some of
 the description above).

  * Also the code needs comments!  At the moment the code has various
 places saying `if hscTarget dflags == HscJavaScript`, but no comment
 explaining why that special case is important at that point. I comment the
 the `Note [blah]` format; see
 [http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/Commentary/CodingStyle coding
 style]. I can see why you have not invested in comments so far; fair
 enough, but in the end they'll be necessary.

  Similarly, at a larger scale, I have no clue how `PointerMarker` works or
 what it is doing.

 Finally, who are you in real life, bosu?  As you going to do this and move
 on, or would you plan to actively support/develop this JS back end?  (We
 had a Java back end whose author moved on, and it was a pain. Eventually
 we deleted it again.)

 Thanks

 Simon

-- 
Ticket URL: <http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/7933#comment:3>
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