[Haskell-cafe] Well typed OS

[MarLinn]

> You'd probably want an ABI for types, no? You'd need a new executable
> format (among many other things!).
>
> The question is: would it be worth it? Types are wonderful in Haskell
> because they allow us to structure our programs. What would structuring
> processes via types accomplish? It would improve the situation with
> shell scripting/pipes as you allude, but that's still an immense amount
> of effort.

Now that I think about it… having something like an ABI or a "Haskell 
binary format" with types in it might indeed be useful in more cases 
than this one.

It seems when a Haskell projects gets a bit larger people tend to search 
for ways to make it more modular. They try plugin frameworks, OS-level 
dynamic linking, on-the-fly compilation etc. But I repeatedly get the 
feeling that all these current approaches aren't actually very good. But 
what if we had some kind of specialized format for compiled, dynamically 
loadable, typed Haskell libraries? Something between a plain OS library 
and bytecode. This might help make programs more modular while keeping 
them type safe.

One thing that might be useful to add next would be some kind of 
centralized registry of types, so that a plugin/library could extend the 
ways the system could be extended.

And going along this line of thought even further leads to… uhm… oh.    OH.

Ok, so, it's the month of Halloween, right?

Because… OSGi, but in Haskell.

Well, maybe there's some sane point in between?

Cheers,
MarLinn