GHCi, Hugs (was: Mixture ...)

[Simon Peyton-Jones]

| This puzzles me a bit. From talking with people at the
| Haskell Workshop, I understood that GHCi would only be an
| interactive compiler.
| 
| The disadvantage with that is that compilation time might be
| very long. But it was said that that is the price we pay.
| 
| The only advantage I can see with interpreted code is the
| fact that it can be compiled (or "processed") much faster.
| Will GHCi reach speeds up to Hugs level?

It'll definitely be mixed compiled/interpreted.  No, compiling
won't be nearly as fast as Hugs, but it will, we earnestly hope be 
"fast enough".   

Execution should be faster than Hugs; apart from anything else
you'll get compiled libraries.

| One bad thing with Hugs is that, for large systems, the
| loading/processing time gets longer, and, worse, is repeated
| every time one loads the system. This is especially bad when
| using "runhugs". Hopefully GHCi will work better in that
| case!

Yes, a lot better.  The idea is only to recompile things that
have changed.

| Another thing that worries me is that Hugs will die. Not
| only because I like Hugs a lot, but also that it is yet
| another Haskell system that is dying. 

I think that is a very reasonable concern.  I certainly want
to see Hugs alive and kicking.

Simon