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The Glasgow Haskell Compiler
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Version 0.06 --- Hackers' release
As many of you know, we have been working hard at Glasgow on a modular
Haskell compiler. We are proud to announce its first public release.
We are calling it a "Hackers' release" because it is not yet suitable
for Haskell *programmers*. It is intended for *implementors* who are
interested in using our compiler as a substrate for their own work.
(A later version will indeed be a "Programmers' release".) We also
hope that some *porters*, people who would like to see Haskell running
on their system, will help us debug any Sun dependencies in our
generated C files. Finally, the *curious* may simply want to see the
World's Largest Haskell Program (40,000 lines?)!
The compiler has the following characteristics:
* It is written in Haskell.
* It generates C as its target code.
* It is specifically designed to be modular, so that others can
use it as a "motherboard" into which they can "plug in" their
latest whizzy strictness analyser, profiler, or whatever.
* Internally, it uses the polymorphic second-order lambda calculus
as a way to preserve correct type information in the face of
substantial program transformations.
* It implements unboxed values as described in [1]. In
particular, the implementation of arithmetic and the exploitation
of strictness analysis is handled just as described there.
* Its back end is based on the Spineless Tagless G-machine, an
abstract machine for non-strict functional languages. There is a
detailed paper describing this work [2].
* It plants code to gather quite a lot of simple profiling
information.
* Its runtime system is heavily configurable. For example, it
comes complete with three different garbage collectors: two-space,
one-space compacting, and Appel-style generational. Adding extra
fields to heap objects (for debugging or profiling for example) is
just a question of altering C macros; the Haskell source doesn't
need to be recompiled. (Caveat: you have to alter them *right*!)
The compiler also suffers its fair share of deficiencies:
* The compiler itself is large and slow.
* The code it generates is very, very unoptimised. Any
comparisons you make of runtime speed with good existing compilers
will be deeply unflattering. (Our next priority is optimisation.)
* Several language features aren't dealt with. This has not
prevented us from compiling and running several quite large
Haskell programs.
Please follow the pointers in the top-level README file to find all of
the documentation in and about this release. Distribution info
follows below.
We hope you enjoy this system, and we look forward to hearing about
your successes with it! Please report bugs to
glasgow-haskell-bugs@dcs.glasgow.ac.uk and direct general queries to
glasgow-haskell-request@<same>.
Simon Peyton Jones
(and his GRASPing colleagues)
......................................................................
References
~~~~~~~~~~
[1] Simon L Peyton Jones and John Launchbury, "Unboxed values as first
class citizens", Functional Programming Languages and Computer
Architecture, Boston, ed Hughes, LNCS 523, Springer Verlag, Sept 1991.
[2] Simon L Peyton Jones, "Implementing lazy functional languages on
stock hardware: the Spineless Tagless G-machine", Journal of
Functional Programming (to appear). Also obtainable by anonymous FTP
from ftp.dcs.glasgow.ac.uk:pub/glasgow-fp/stg.dvi.
Distribution
~~~~~~~~~~~~
This release is available, in whole or in part, from the usual Haskell
anonymous FTP sites, in the directory pub/haskell/glasgow:
nebula.cs.yale.edu (128.36.13.1)
ftp.dcs.glasgow.ac.uk (130.209.240.50)
animal.cs.chalmers.se (129.16.225.66)
(Beleaguered NIFTP users within the UK can get the same files by using
a <FP>/haskell/glasgow prefix, instead of pub/haskell/glasgow.)
These are the available files (for the ON DEMAND ones, please ask):
ghc-0.06-src.tar.Z the basic source distribution; assumes you
will compile it with Chalmers HBC, version
0.997.3 or later.
ghc-0.06-proto-hi-files.tar.Z
An "overlay" of .hi interface files, to be
used when compiling with the *prototype*
Glasgow Haskell compiler (version 0.411 or
later).
ghc-0.06-hc-files.tar.Z An "overlay" of .hc generated-C files; used
either to save you the trouble of compiling
the prelude, or because your only interest is
porting the C to
ghc-0.06-tests.tar.Z Some of our test files we have used in getting
this beast going. We hope to grow them into a
semi-respectable benchmark suite.
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