[Haskell] haskell-in-a-box?

[Assini, Pasqualino]

Hello,

you are probably all aware of the recent brouhaha relative to
virtualisation, that is to say the possibility of running multiple
operating systems in parallel on the same PC (see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtualisation).

This opens all kind of interesting possibilities, in particular for
software distribution.
 
Rather then having to worry about creating and maintaining different
versions of a program for Windows + the infinite variations of
Linux/Unix one could simply distribute a stand-alone virtual machine
including the kernel of the OS of choice plus the application (this
naturally only applies to applications with a network interface, e.g.
web-based applications). 

This would have significant advantages in terms of ease of installation,
safety, manageability and possibly also efficiency of execution as the
underlying OS could be fine-tuned to support the application in an
optimal way.

This new trend might also be good news for Haskell as, coupled with a
free OS with a small footprint, it might be used to create network
applications that are both powerful and easy-to-install and manage. 

Since the question: what is the smallest X86 OS core on top of which one
might compile Haskell (and I am mainly thinking of GHC Haskell here)
programs?

And: has anyone already built a 'haskell-in-a-box' virtual machine?



Regards,

     titto

-------------------------
Pasqualino "Titto" Assini
E-mail: titto at quicquid.org
Skype: tittoassini
MSN : titto at kamus.it