[Yhc] how to get a new front-end - idea

[Tom Shackell]

> Please don't throw away YHC I think it's important to have various
> implementations of Haskell around. We don't want the language to become
> stale.

I'm not suggesting throwing away Yhc, I'm simply suggesting a change of 
front end. Currently Yhc uses the nhc98 front end, but this is proving 
to be rather unsatisfactory so I suggest moving to using GHC as the 
front end.

This is particularly 'not killing' Yhc because Yhc is really a back-end 
modification, so it doesn't have a front end 'of its own'.

> What I would find very useful is a standard interface to all Haskell front
> ends. Would it not be a better idea to make the API for GHC and YHC appear
> the same? That way one could plug a ghc or yhc front end onto their system
> and it would just work with the minimum of change. I say this because
> porting HaRe to GHC (from programatica) proved to be an enormous job.
> It would have been made so much easier if both front ends at least some
> common structures remaining the same.

Interchangeable front ends is a laudable goal but pretty difficult to 
achieve. In fact the easiest way to achieve it is for both compilers to 
use the GHC front-end ;-)


Tom