[Haskell-cafe] Re: Haskell on ARM (was Re: ANN: Topkata)

[Jeremy Apthorp]

2008/6/25 Braden Shepherdson <Braden.Shepherdson at gmail.com>:
> Jeremy Shaw wrote:
>>
>> If any does attempt to build for the ARM, please, please, please,
>> document what you do in the wiki. And, if you do, edit the wiki as you
>> go, you definitely won't be able to remember what you did after the
>> fact. (Or, at the very least, use some program to capture everything
>> you do so that you can refer to it later).
>>
>> And, finally, I heard vague rumors a while ago that made me think that
>> GHC 6.10 might have a pure ANSI-C backend? Is there any truth to this?
>> That would make porting much easier if it meant you did not have to do
>> steps 1-4.
>>
>> j.
>> ps. I would be happy to try to answer any questions if someone tries a
>> port. I would still like to run GHC on my 770, and I hope to own an
>> iPhone if they fix a few ommisions (bluetooth keyboard support, and
>> similar stuff).
>>
>
>
> I recently acquired the ARM-based Nokia N810 (and <3 it), powered by Maemo.
> Running a uname -a on it:
>
> Linux Nokia-N810-42-19 2.6.21-omap1 #2 Fri Nov 16 16:24:58 EET 2007 armv6l
> unknown
>
> I would love a working GHC implementation on it, if for nothing else than
> how awesome it would be. Whether that means using a C back-end or native
> compilation doesn't matter to me so much.
>
> I might be one to attempt this, as I know C and ARM-ish asm decently well
> and have a powerful desktop to compile on. I have no familiarity
> with GHC internals, though. Lastly, I won't have anything like the time to
> attempt this seriously until mid-September or so.

Oops, forgot to Cc the list.

Next year I'll be working on a project for my undergraduate computing
course at UNSW that will involve getting GHC to target the Nintendo
DS. It'll require cross-compilation, because the DS isn't powerful
enough to actually run GHC (4M main ram and a 66MHz processor). It'll
also require that I significantly strip down the runtime system, as
the current RTS won't fit in 4M and leave any left over for the main
application.

I'll be documenting the whole process, but I won't be starting until
next year...

Jeremy