[Haskell-cafe] [GSoC] Project proposal: Hoogle 4

[Neil Mitchell]

Hi

I would like to be a Summer of Code student, doing the project "Hoogle
4" (http://haskell.org/hoogle/)

PROJECT GOALS:

There are two main themes:

1) Make Hoogle more useful to the community, along the same path as it
is currently used.

2) Make Hoogle suitable to use as the standard interface to Hackage.

This requires adding the following features to Hoogle, to form a
Hoogle 4 release:

* Faster searching (1000x faster at least, perhaps more like 1000000x
for text searching)
* Generalised text searching (i.e. searching .cabal fields)
* Removal of all bugs :-)
* Support for higher-kinded type classes (i.e. Monads)
* Support for some Haskell type extensions (i.e. Multi-Parameter type classes)
* Support for multiple packages
* Generalised interface to all of Cabal

Progress on Hoogle 4 has already started, but has currently stalled
due to lack of time. I am writing up my PhD currently, and will be
available to start at the beginning of the Summer to work on Hoogle.

Duncan Coutts has agreed to mentor this project. The position of
backup mentor is still available. I do not expect to need a great deal
of supervision :-)

Please respond with any suggestions, requests for further information
or just general comments.

Thanks

Neil