[Yhc] Killing off nhc

[Stefan O'Rear]

On Fri, Jun 15, 2007 at 01:01:01PM +0100, Neil Mitchell wrote:
> After discussions with Malcolm, there are a number of things that need
> to be done before Yhc can replace nhc:
> 
> 1) Performance: Yhc must perform faster than nhc, we used to, but we
> don't anymore. Tom is going to investigate.
> 
> 2) Buildability: Malcolm still can't build on his Mac, due to library
> issues. Tom is going to remove all dependencies on all libraries,
> which should enable this. Even so, we need some work on the build
> system to get the libraries working for him. I think Malcom is the
> only person who has build system problems, so perhaps we can fix this
> for him.

That you mention this *now* implies that Malcolm is having issues with
libgmp as well as libffi, which means that (per your plan mentioned on
IRC yesterday) Malcolm will get 32 bit Integers.  Why didn't he have
this problem with nhc?

> 3) Libraries: We need to move to the Haskell.org libraries. This may
> mean increasing our build stuff, or moving to Cabal.

Increasing our build stuff, maybe not; I'm a strong opponent of GHC's
extralibs :)

Supporting Cabal is an absolute must if we want to take over any sizable
chunk of the Haskell implementation's market; for implementation I
recommend <http://haskell.org/pipermail/libraries/2007-May/007507.html>.

It might be an issue, that yhc unlike nhc cannot generate executables.
We should look at what Hugs' cabal support uses.

It would also be Pretty Cool if yhc proper became the first Haskell
compiler buildable with cabal! :)

> 4) Compatability: We need to compile more programs than nhc, this
> probably comes down to primitives and libraries.
> 
> 5) Bootstrapping: We need to bootstrap Yhc with itself.

> Moving to one nhc/Yhc derivative is clearly a good thing. If anyone
> wants to take on any of these tasks, or has insights into how we can
> do this more quickly, we'd love to hear!

(words of encoragement, I'm very pleased with this development)

Stefan