[Haskell-cafe] [ANN] generic-random-0.2.0.0

[Li-yao Xia]

Hello,

This library aims to derive random generators for ADTs. The previous and 
first release was an implementation of Boltzmann generators, in response 
to this blogpost by Brent Yorgey.

https://byorgey.wordpress.com/2016/03/23/boltzmann-sampling-for-generic-arbitrary-instances/

It's nice to look at, but it is an opinionated choice about the 
resulting probability distribution which is not always suitable.

In this release, using GHC.Generics, Generic.Random.Generic wraps common 
boilerplate to define "arbitrary" in particular, hiding from you long 
chains of the following:

     Constructor <$> arbitrary <*> arbitrary <*> arbitrary

as well as

     frequency [(n1, C1 <$> arbitrary), (n2, C2 <$> arbitrary), ...]

leaving just the weights [n1, n2, ...] for you to specify.

     data Tree a = Leaf a | Node (Tree a) (Tree a)
       deriving Generic

     instance Arbitrary a => Arbitrary (Tree a) where
       arbitrary = genericArbitraryFrequency [9, 8]

     -- equivalent to
     -- >   arbitrary = frequency
     -- >     [ (9, Leaf <$> arbitrary)
     -- >     , (8, Node <$> arbitrary <*> arbitrary)
     -- >     ]

It comes with a simple opt-in strategy to bound the size of generated 
data, especially convenient for recursive data types. Indeed, even for a 
simple binary tree, the naive generator obtained by producing a leaf 
half of the times, and an inner node the other half, with two 
recursively generated children, results in a random tree of *infinite* 
expected size (though the tree is still "almost surely" finite).

There is no theoretical reason the library uses two flavors of generics 
for different tasks. There are trade-offs, but I can't see impassable 
obstacles to use one in place of the other. If I had to be consistent 
now I'd choose GHC.Generics, though I was not fluent enough in that 
flavor at the time when I wrote the Data part.

Property-based testing is the main application I have in mind for this 
library. Nevertheless, I welcome ideas, questions and suggestions from 
any domain or of general nature.

Github: https://github.com/lysxia/generic-random
Hackage: http://hackage.haskell.org/package/generic-random

Li-yao