[Haskell-cafe] Translating Haskell to VHDL. What approach to follow?

[Neil Mitchell]

Hi

> In order to get part of the work for free I decided to design the
> translator as a compiler backend. The best option so far seems to be
> Yhc's Core API (http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/Yhc/API/Core ), which
> unfortunately lacks type information.

Can you mention what you need type information for? If it is to detect
higher order functions (as you have mentioned in IRC conversations
with me) then in about a week I am going to announce a Yhc.Core first
order transformation, which will remove that issue for you. In general
the lack of types in Yhc.Core has not proved a major issue for anyone
- if there is anyone who does absolutely require type information in
their intermediate language and therefore cannot use Yhc.Core, I'd be
very interested to hear from them.


> I discarded GHC due to the current "bit-rotted" state of External Core
> (http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell-cafe/2006-October/018786.html
> ) and higher complexity of its core representation (SystemFC).

Igloo submitted a few patches in the last week to get GHC.Core working
again. It doesn't have the same infrastructure support as Yhc.Core,
but it does have the advantage of having the GHC team behind it.

> I'd be pleased to hear any suggestions.

I (obviously...) would like you to use Yhc.Core, if you could expand
on why that isn't appropriate for you then perhaps you'll either get
improvements into Yhc.Core or some hints from the GHC team :)

Thanks

Neil (ndm)