primitive library

[David Feuer]

I think the areas in the primitive library demonstrate a part of the array
design space that seems to have gone relatively unexplored in Haskell:
plain old vectors. Unlike the vector library, there is no stream fusion
framework. Unlike the array library, there is no class-based reliance on
fold/build fusion.

The (flawed) addition of numerous class instances a couple versions ago
made primitive arrays seem much more viable to end users as an alternative
to their heavier counterparts. I have become interested in fixing the
mistakes that were made, seeing just how much performance we can squeeze
out (and what limitations we run into), and fleshing out the API.

On Mon, Apr 23, 2018, 9:20 AM Andrew Martin <andrew.thaddeus at gmail.com>
wrote:

> I'll get something together soon that explains my motivations. The short
> summary is that the types in primitive unpack better that their
> counterparts in vector (meaning, they unpack into one machine word instead
> of three). I started using these types in internal data structures in
> libraries I would write (since I didn't need slicing), and then just
> started noticing stuff I thought it would be nice to add.
>
> David noticed that a bunch of the typeclass instances were broken. I'd
> been working on a library quickcheck-classes that I use to test instances
> at my work place. The primitive library was missing a test suite, so I used
> it to test all the instances to ensure that the fixes David had written
> were correct. In the process, I found more broken instances and fixed them.
> The life lesson here is that property testing is important.
>
> PrimArray is an interesting story. Both winterland1989 and I had
> independently written libraries that did the same exact thing: implement a
> typed interface to ByteArray that keeps track of the element type. This
> makes PrimArray much safer to work with than ByteArray. Eventually,
> winterland's initial PR to bring this to primitive stalled. It implemented
> several other features (some of which may still eventually get added), but
> it's scope was large enough that no maintainer was able to feel comfortable
> approving it. More recently, I took at stab at doing the same thing, but I
> only added PrimArray, and after a lot of feedback from David, Carter, and
> Ryan, it got merged in.
>
> This got longer than I thought it would. I'll work on something that talks
> more about motivations and features soon.
>
> On Mon, Apr 23, 2018 at 5:48 AM, Simon Peyton Jones <simonpj at microsoft.com
> > wrote:
>
>> Andrew, David
>>
>> I’ve seen a lot of traffic about the *primitive* library, in which you
>> two are playing a leading role.
>>
>> Clearly something interesting is going on, but I have not been paying
>> enough attention to work out what.  Maybe lots of unrelated things?  Maybe
>> a handful of closely related things?
>>
>> Would you consider putting out a summary (to libraries and ghc-devs) to
>> give an overview of the main threads, and any driving motivations.  Why has
>> all this blown up now?
>>
>> Meanwhile, thank you for being so active.
>>
>> Simon
>>
>
>
>
> --
> -Andrew Thaddeus Martin
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