[Haskell-cafe] Re: Libraries for Commercial Users

[Don Stewart]

brad.larsen:
> On Sat, Oct 10, 2009 at 5:11 PM, Don Stewart <dons at galois.com> wrote:
> > brad.larsen:
> >> John,
> >>
> >> On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 3:20 PM, John A. De Goes <john at n-brain.net> wrote:
> >> [...]
> >> > JVM is cross-platform, and contains sufficient typing information to
> >> > permit one to write something like, "import foreign jvm
> >> > java.list.Collection", and have typed access to the whole class and all of
> >> > its methods.
> >> [...]
> >>
> >> Having painless Haskell <- Java interoperability would be great.  I'm
> >> curious though:  could it really be so simple as a one-line ``import
> >> foreign jvm'' directive?  I imagine the purity mismatch between
> >> Haskell and Java would be very troublesome.
> >
> > No more so than C, surely. We're used to stateful APIs. They're a pain.
> [...]
> 
> The use of foreign C libraries in Haskell is typically done through
> definition of lots of boilerplate code, putting a safe, workable
> Haskell veneer over the library.  Right?
> 
> I got the impression (perhaps wrongly) that John was suggesting a
> simple one-line ``import foreign jvm LIBRARY'' directive to let you
> use LIBRARY without writing all that boilerplate.  Which would be very
> convenient, but is rather different than the situation with C
> libraries.
> 

I don't see how this is enough -- any more than the one line imports of
C libraries are enough. It'd be a good start.