[Haskell-cafe] Opinion about JHC

[John Meacham]

On Wed, Nov 11, 2009 at 01:47:43PM -0500, Lennart Augustsson wrote:
> Do you use jhc when you develop jhc?  I.e., does it compile itself.
> For me, this is the litmus test of when a compiler has become usable.
> I mean, if even the developers of a compiler don't use it themselves,
> why should anyone else? :)

Well, this touches on another issue, and that is that jhc is a native
cross-compiler. It never behaves differently if compiled by another
haskell compiler or is compiled on an alternate platform. There is never
a need to 'bootstrap' it, once you have jhc running anywhere then it is
as good as it would be if it is running everywhere. So to me,
self-hosting has never been a big issue as it doesn't provide any direct
"material" benefit. My time is better spent implementing more extensions
or improving the back end. 

Of course, if jhc were to have a back-end that ghc didn't support that
was a useful platform for jhc to run on, then it would be a different
story. There would be a direct material benefit to having jhc being
self-hosting so it would become a priority.

        John

-- 
John Meacham - ⑆repetae.net⑆john⑈ - http://notanumber.net/