[Haskell] ANNOUNCE: Harpy -- run-time code generation library

Daniel Mahler dmahler at gmail.com
Tue Jun 12 11:54:34 EDT 2007


Given your reservation regarding LLVM,
you may be interested in vmgen, developed and used as a part of  gforth.
It is also claimed that a JVM built with vmgen had performance comparable
to state of the art JITs.
If I remember the author of both gforth (including vmgen) and the
experimantal JVM,
is Anton Ertl.
Personally I have never used it, and do not know how good it is,
so I am not trying to push it.
However, what little I do know about it seems to address your concerns
with LLVM:

> LLVM is indeed interesting, but has several drawbacks:
>
> - written in C++ (we don't have experience in interfacing Haskell and C++)

vmgen is C AFAIK

> - has been used with imperative languages yet, no experience available
>   on using it for FP.

Forth is not a functional language by a long shot,
but forth code does tend to have a functional flavour.
(if you squint hard enough :) )

> - rather large system

The whole of gforth is not that big, and vmgen is just a part of that.

> - and finally, I have to admit: a bit of Not Invented Here
>
> One of our goals was indeed to have a Haskell-only code generator, which
> has the advantage that it is easier to install, use and distribute.

Yes, there is that.

Anyway as I said, I do not know how much mileage you could get out of it,
but it seemed to be worth mentioning, given what you said about LLVM.

cheers
Daniel

> Regards,
>   Martin
>
>
>
>
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