[Haskell-cafe] Some random newbie questions
Shae Matijs Erisson
shae at ScannedInAvian.com
Thu Jan 6 13:17:48 EST 2005
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.
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