[Haskell-cafe] Three Google Summer of Code project proposals

[wren ng thornton]

On 3/27/11 7:16 AM, Johan Tibell wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 27, 2011 at 1:03 PM, Andrew Coppin
> <andrewcoppin at btinternet.com>  wrote:
>>> *** Build multiple Cabal packages in parallel ***
>>> http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/summer-of-code/ticket/1594
>>>
>>> Many developers have multi-core machines but Cabal runs the build
>>> process in a single thread, only making use of one core. If the build
>>> process could be parallelized build times could be cut by perhaps a
>>> factor of 2-8, depending on the number of cores and opportunity of
>>> parallel execution available.
>>
>> Isn't the Cabal build process strictly I/O-limited rather than CPU-limited?
>
> It's mostly CPU-limited due to spending most of its time in ghc --make
> (which is CPU limited). It would be nice to parallelize GHC itself at
> some point but that's a harder task I believe.

I'm sure it is. But even if we had parallel-compiling GHC, having a 
parallel-building Cabal would make it easier to make the leap to 
distributed building--- which would be helpful for folks working on 
clusters and needing to install a whole lot of packages at once (e.g., 
bootstrapping or reinstalling). Haskell supercomputing ahoy!

-- 
Live well,
~wren