#7933: JavaScript Cmm backend ---------------------------------+------------------------------------------ Reporter: bosu | Owner: Type: feature request | Status: patch Priority: normal | Milestone: Component: Compiler | Version: 7.6.3 Keywords: | Os: Unknown/Multiple Architecture: Unknown/Multiple | Failure: None/Unknown Difficulty: Unknown | Testcase: Blockedby: | Blocking: Related: | ---------------------------------+------------------------------------------ Comment(by simonpj): Interesting, thank you. Some thoughts: * I'd be happy to have a JS back end for GHC. As you say, it's pretty non-invasive, which is good. * You aren't the first to attack this problem; see [http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/The_JavaScript_Problem the Haskell wiki JS page]. How does your solution differ? I'd love to see comments from Fay's author, GHCJS's author etc. Maybe you can make common cause with some of them to get JS into GHC? * More generally, before adopting it for GHC, I'd ideally like to see a group of enthusiasts saying "yes, this is the way to go". I'm not well equipped to make a critical assessment from a JS point of view. * You could start a GHC Trac Wiki page describing the implementation in overview, so someone could figure out how it works (eg including some of the description above). * Also the code needs comments! At the moment the code has various places saying `if hscTarget dflags == HscJavaScript`, but no comment explaining why that special case is important at that point. I comment the the `Note [blah]` format; see [http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/Commentary/CodingStyle coding style]. I can see why you have not invested in comments so far; fair enough, but in the end they'll be necessary. Similarly, at a larger scale, I have no clue how `PointerMarker` works or what it is doing. Finally, who are you in real life, bosu? As you going to do this and move on, or would you plan to actively support/develop this JS back end? (We had a Java back end whose author moved on, and it was a pain. Eventually we deleted it again.) Thanks Simon -- Ticket URL: http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/7933#comment:3 GHC http://www.haskell.org/ghc/ The Glasgow Haskell Compiler