Helium II

[Jurriaan Hage]

Dear all,

We’ve been active since September making the Helium compiler more Haskell 2010 compliant.
In particular, we have a branch with support for Haskell 2010 type classes, a branch that
supports import/export following the standard, and a branch that compiles to LLVM instead 
of the `old’ Helium-specific LVM that has become harder and harder to maintain.
These still need to be integrated. When I find time for that is hard to say.

Another project will be taking place in the period Feb-Apr and I expect we can tie up a lot of 
loose ends then. Current loose ends include newtype, record syntax, integration of previous projects, 
Cabal support, Quickcheck, strict data fields, improving the LLVM back-end.

One thing I have wondered about: do we actually have something like an extensive set of tests
to throw at any Haskell 2010 compliant compiler that would help find mistakes on our parr?
My students have come up with a range of examples to test their implementations, but there
is nothing like a set of programs you’ve never seen or heard about.

We shall also be adding support for GADTs as part of a reseach project this course year. Again, a large range
of examples would be welcome indeed.

best,
Jur