UHC-like JavaScript backend in GHC

[Christopher Done]

You also need an accomplice web server to host the JS file containing
the JavaScript for the web worker to run. I don't see how you can
"fork" threads without such support.

On 13 November 2012 20:53, Luite Stegeman <stegeman at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Does/can cabal-install support GHCJS? I suppose that's a minor advantage of extending GHC itself; you get cabal support almost for free.
>
> Yes. There are two GHCJS installation options. One is the standalone
> option that includes wrappers for cabal and ghc-pkg. You use
> `ghcjs-cabal` to install packages, see the result with `ghcjs-pkg
> list`. The standalone compiler can be installed with cabal-install,
> but it does require you to run `ghcjs-boot` in a configured GHC source
> tree, to install the core libraries (ghc-prim, base, integer-gmp).
>
> The alternative is the integrated compiler, where you completely
> replace your existing GHC with one that can output Javascript. You
> don't get separate package databases this way.
>
>> How big are the JS files generated with either the new or the old code generator? I recall there was a HS -> JS effort out there that generated huge JS files. UHC's output is relatively compact and doesn't grow as fast with bigger programs.
>
> Relatively big for the new generator because I haven't focused on this
> yet. The generated code has lots of redundant assignments that can be
> weeded out later with a dataflow analysis pass. The old generator is a
> bit more compact (similar to haste compiler). Both versions have a
> function-level linker that only includes functions that are actually
> used.
>
>> WebWorkers is quite limited indeed. I'm not yet sure how the serialisation might complicate matters, but it seems that WebWorkers is only really a possible backend for `fork`, and not `forkIO`.
>
> For one, you cannot serialize closures, so it will probably be similar
> to the restrictions in Cloud Haskell in that you can only call
> top-level things on the other side (Unless you don't use Javascript
> closures for your Haskell closures, the new GHCJS generator can
> actually move closures to a WebWorker, at least in theory, it's not
> yet implemented)
>
> luite
>
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