[Haskell-cafe] compilation to C, not via-C

[Sam Martin]

Thanks Bulat and Miguel.

Unless I've missed something, the FFI is an great description of how to
bind C and Haskell - I think it's fine. I've read most of the content
either on or referenced by the wiki - although I could well be missing
something. I believe the problem is with the actual code compilation
itself.

I need a list of .c and .h files as an end result of the Haskell
compilation stage. I expect these c files will need to include Haskell
runtime C code to operate, and therefore have some dependencies in order
to compile and link.

Afaict, GHC as it stands does not allow me to do this, even though it
presumably generates C in the process of compiling binary objects.

Actually having C source as an end result is critical as I need control
over exactly how the source is compiled and linked. For example:
- I need to compile to different targets: either a static C lib, exe,
dll or C++ lib.
- I need to support multiple compilers.
- I might want to produce a custom runtime.

In short, I'd like to use Haskell as a code-generator.

I can't see that this would be unachievable, particularly given it's
generating C already. Have I missed something?

Cheers,
Sam

-----Original Message-----
From: Bulat Ziganshin [mailto:bulat.ziganshin at gmail.com] 
Sent: 24 April 2009 17:53
To: Sam Martin
Cc: haskell-cafe at haskell.org
Subject: Re: [Haskell-cafe] compilation to C, not via-C

Hello Sam,

Friday, April 24, 2009, 8:36:50 PM, you wrote:

> I work in Games middleware, and am very interested in looking at how
> Haskell could help us. We basically sell C++ libraries. I would like
to
> be able to write some areas of our libraries in Haskell, compile the
> Haskell to C and incorporate that code into a C++ library. 

well, you can intercept these files. once i wrote simple 4-line
haskell utility (it may be 20 lines of C++ or so) and compiled it down
to C. results was 300 lines or so which it's impossible to understand

so, if you just need haskell-C++ interaction, you may look into using
FFI [1,2]. if you believe that you can compile some
java/ruby/haskellwhatever code down to C++ and incorporate it into
your function - sorry, they all have too different computing model

btw, my own program [3] goes this way - i combine fast C++ and complex
Haskell code via FFI/dll to produce fast, feature-rich application


[1] http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/GHC/Using_the_FFI
[2] http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/FFI_cook_book
[3] http://freearc.org


-- 
Best regards,
 Bulat                            mailto:Bulat.Ziganshin at gmail.com