[jhc] what to work on next?

[Corey O'Connor]

Outside of the compiler itself: A JHC equivalent to ghc-pkg would be
nice. That, I'd imagine, would require some Cabal library integration.

As for the compiler:

0. The performance of the jhc compiler is sometimes downright slow.
Given your description of how JHC works it makes sense why the compile
times can be long. Looking into optimizing this would be nice.

1. Additional documentation of the compiler source. This isn't much of
a problem given the code is quite clear.

2. Improved garbage collector? This might just be a documentation
issue. The documentation states the region-based garbage collector
leaks memory. And the configure script hints at being able to use a
standard Boehm garbage collector library. Does the region based
garbage collector still have issues? When should one be used over the
other?

3. Direct code generator instead of relying on the C compiler. In
addition to opening up some generated code optimization possibilities
this may tie in with #0 above. Perhaps some compiler performance
optimizations are only possible with a native code generator?

I would like to get involved in JHC more and see me mostly able to
contribute to #0 and #1. Specifically I plan on attacking #0 and
documenting everything I read in the source along the way.

Cheers,
-Corey O'Connor




On Tue, Jun 23, 2009 at 4:55 PM, John Meacham<john at repetae.net> wrote:
> I figured I'd ask all of you, what do you think the most important thing
> to work on in jhc right now is?
>
> I hit a major milestone by being able to compile a whole host of
> packages unchanged.
>
> Jhc alreadly works admirably as a cross compiler and generates pretty
> speedy code. It would be very easy for me to get lost in coming up with
> new, wacky optimizations. So, what do you want to see before that
> happens?
>
>        John
> --
> John Meacham - ⑆repetae.net⑆john⑈ - http://notanumber.net/
> _______________________________________________
> jhc mailing list
> jhc at haskell.org
> http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/jhc
>