[Haskell-cafe] GHC for mobile devices?

Kristopher Micinski krismicinski at gmail.com
Mon Nov 12 00:31:17 CET 2012


Yes, and the Android NDK allows you to write arbitrary C code, it's
just a slightly less than pleasant interface with the SDK :-(.

Perhaps it's easier to do this in iOS as it's all objective C rather
than a vm with a runtime system.  Also not sure what the status of
porting the runtime system to ios would be.

kris

On Sat, Nov 10, 2012 at 9:03 PM, Andrew Pennebaker
<andrew.pennebaker at gmail.com> wrote:
> ASM for iOS is possible, so GHC mobile should be possible.
>
> www.shervinemami.info/armAssembly.html#howto
>
> On Nov 10, 2012 5:59 PM, "Andrew Pennebaker" <andrew.pennebaker at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> I've tried porting GHC to Haiku OS, a Unix-like desktop OS, but the state
>> of the GHC build system is fairly confusing. The build scripts contain a
>> Perl script with a bad shebang, and you can't build GHC without already
>> having a working older version.
>>
>> If someone can point me to the most recent GHC code that doesn't need
>> itself to compile, I can work on a Haiku version as practice. I really want
>> GHC for every possible system.
>>
>> On Nov 10, 2012 5:49 PM, "Kristopher Micinski" <krismicinski at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> On Sat, Nov 10, 2012 at 3:50 PM, Casey Basichis <caseybasichis at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>> > Hi Kris,
>>> >
>>> > No offense taken, it was an argument that works to shut down
>>> > constructive
>>> > discussion of how to get Haskell running on mobile, a task which has
>>> > perplexed me for several long days.  I agree most apps are pretty
>>> > terrible,
>>> > at least on iOS though, despite the percentages being wildly off there
>>> > are
>>> > still a few hundred apps that are very well done and thoughtful, none
>>> > of
>>> > them using Haskell I'm sure.
>>> >
>>>
>>> Yup!  Most of the time apps are merely "translated" versions of rails
>>> frontends.  (For better or for worse, I assume that if we were to port
>>> haskell to work with Android really it would be mostly to appease my
>>> purity.)
>>>
>>> > I'm looking to pass Haskell lists of musical data and return processed
>>> > musical ideas from it (not audio, not realtime).  I was also planning
>>> > on
>>> > handling a database within Haskell as the information contained would
>>> > be
>>> > used by the music processing and from what I have read Haskell
>>> > interfaces to
>>> > SQL far more readily than with a C++ orm type solution.  I was planning
>>> > on
>>> > working with Haskells Euterpea as base to build my ideas off of, my I
>>> > might
>>> > end up rolling my own similar library as my aims are a bit different
>>> > than
>>> > theirs.
>>> >
>>>
>>> I'm not sure I understand completely, but I agree this isn't a bad idea.
>>>
>>> > Everything else would be C++, including the interface, audio and dsp
>>> > processing etc.   I already have the C++ stuff running on my phone.  I
>>> > have
>>> > read about the difficulty of getting Haskell working in real world
>>> > scenarios, but as far as I understand my plans for it are fairly well
>>> > suited
>>> > to it.
>>> >
>>>
>>> I don't disagree!
>>>
>>> > Since much of the documentation online about Haskell seems to be out of
>>> > date, its tough to get a general feel for whats working.  I see people
>>> > mention that cross-compilation was finished a while back which should
>>> > allow
>>> > for targeting arm but nothing concrete and the website gives
>>> > conflicting
>>> > info.  I've also considered using GHC to generate C to paste into the
>>> > project but it seems there have been and may be more integrated ways to
>>> > get
>>> > it running.
>>>
>>> I am venturing into my embarrassing lack of knowledge about GHC
>>> internals here, but how easily would the run time system work on
>>> Android..?  I had assumed a large part of the effort into getting
>>> OCaml to work on iPhone went into the runtime system, no?
>>>
>>> If you're (Andrew or anyone) still interested in pursuing this I would
>>> be interested in helping out, I have some Android internals knowledge
>>> and would be glad to lend a hand.
>>>
>>> One major thing that seems to be necessary is congealing all the
>>> (mis/outdated)information into the wiki article on haskell.org.
>>>
>>> kris
>
>
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