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

[Bulat Ziganshin]

Hello Sam,

Friday, April 24, 2009, 9:09:43 PM, you wrote:

well, GHC generates .o files. so you may solve some of your questions.
if you can absolutely ignore performance, you can use so-called
non-registerized compilation what generates ansi-compatible C code

most Haskell libs are written for ghc, so for other compilers you will
need to write almost self-contained code

> 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