[Haskell-cafe] Diving into the records swamp (possible GSoC project)

[Adam Gundry]

Hi,

I am hoping to do a GSoC project this year working on GHC, and have been
pointed in the direction of the records issue (in particular, the desire
to overload field names). This has been discussed on-and-off for years,
and while there are lots of ideas [1], little has been implemented in
GHC itself.

The plan would be to implement a solution to the "narrow issue" of
overloaded field names, along the lines of Simon PJ's SORF proposal (on
the wiki). This would provide a basis for experimentation with
first-class record types. While there are still design issues to
resolve, the broad plan is clear and I'm confident it can be implemented
in a summer and without overly restricting future record system designs.

Does this sound like a reasonable strategy? I'd appreciate comments and
criticism, although arguing about the details of the design should
perhaps wait.

(A little about me: I'm a PhD student working on type inference for
Haskell and dependent types, with about four years' Haskell experience
including work on big type-system related projects. I am familiar with
the theory behind GHC, but I haven't worked on the code before.)

Thanks,

Adam Gundry


[1] http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/Records