[Haskell-cafe] Best way to build a GHC backend?

[Jonathan Geddes]

Thanks for all the Info, Brent! I wasn't aware of many of those projects.

I agree that contributing to an existing project is a better idea than
doing something new. I suppose I was hoping there would be an official GHC
JavaScript backend so that it would be clear which of the efforts to
contribute to (and use).

-J Arthur

On Mon, Jul 9, 2012 at 8:38 AM, Brent Yorgey <byorgey at seas.upenn.edu> wrote:

> On Sun, Jul 08, 2012 at 09:21:08AM -0600, Jonathan Geddes wrote:
> > I agree that the Raison d'être for a .NET or JVM backend is interop.
> > Perhaps that's not worth the effort of an entirely new backend.
> JavaScript
> > is a different beast, however.  I said before:
> >
> > >From my point of view, languages that cannot run on one of the 3
> > > aforementioned platforms will become irrelevant. (with the exception of
> > C,
> > > of course).
> >
> > I'll take that one step further and say that for web applications it is
> > becoming increasingly difficult to justify using a language that WILL NOT
> > run both client and server. JavaScript (with NodeJS), Clojure (with
> > ClojureScript), and Dart are just a few examples.
> >
> > I really believe that with a solid JavaScript backend, Haskell would be
> an
> > ideal web application language. Am I alone in that belief? What can I do
> to
> > get the ball rolling on that?
>
> I should point out that the ball already IS rolling -- ranging from
> EDSLs that compile to JavaScript [1,2] to macro systems [3] to more
> serious full-featured efforts [4,5].  There's even a wiki page listing
> all these and more [6].  The yesod developers share your view that
> Haskell would benefit from some sort of JavaScript backend; see [7] as
> well as the ensuing discussion on Reddit [8]. See also Elm [9], which
> compiles to HTML+CSS+JavaScript and has some Haskell integration [10].
>
> Rather than trying to start yet another effort, what about
> contributing to one of these ongoing ones?
>
> -Brent
>
> [1] http://www.ittc.ku.edu/csdlblog/?p=88
> [2] http://www.ittc.ku.edu/csdl/fpg/node/125
> [3] http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/JMacro
> [4] http://uu-computerscience.github.com/uhc-js/
> [5] https://github.com/ghcjs/ghcjs
> [6] http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/The_JavaScript_Problem
> [7] http://www.yesodweb.com/blog/2012/04/client-side
> [8]
> http://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/sm72n/client_side_yesod_an_frpinspired_approach/
> [9] http://elm-lang.org/
> [10]
> http://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/uugne/announcing_elm_02_haskell_integration_yesod/
>
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