- Glasgow-haskell-users

Bootstrapping for Leopard
by Philip K.F. Hölzenspies 04 Feb '08

04 Feb '08

Dear All, I'm trying toupdate the Portfile so that ghc-6.8.2 can be built using MacPorts (handy for installing other ghc-dependent material from MacPorts like gtk2hs). The problem seems to be that the available bootstrap binary http://www.haskell.org/ghc/dist/6.6/ghc-6.6-i386-apple-darwin-bootstrap.tar… causes a segfault on Leopard (below are the steps I took in my attempt to build ghc with this bootstrap binary). Using Manuel Chakravarty's binary distribution of ghc-6.8.1-i386-apple-darwin building ghc-6.8.2 works fine. It seemed to me that the easiest way to fix the bootstrap problem is to boot from C as described on the wiki (http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/Building/Porting) Two things were wrong, however. make hc-file-bundle Making the hc-file-bundle target failed, because not all rts/*.cmm had rts/*.hc counterparts after the build. The make fails because of this fragment from the Makefile (part of the hc-file-bundle target, starting from line 513): for f in `$(FIND) ghc-$(ProjectVersion)/compiler ghc-$(ProjectVersion)/rts -name "*.cmm" -follow -print` ""; do \ if test "x$$f" !=3D "x"; then \ echo `echo "$$f" | sed 's/cmm$$/hc/g' ` >> hc-files-to-go ; \ fi; \ done; This adds some non-existing .hc files to the hc-files-to-go list that tar will not find, later on, causing an error. I just added a test to see whether the file exists. If it does not, I call make for that .hc file explicitly, which solves the problem for most files. The files that don't have a make target, I simply omitted from the hc-files-to-go. I haven't been able to test the severity of this, because of the second problem. sh -e ./distrib/hc-build --prefix=3D$HOME/src/testbuild [--enable-hc-boot [--enable-hc-boot-unregisterised]] As a minor bug wrt. the wiki page, the hc-build is not executable by default. The more serious problem seems to be that the cold-boot option of configure is broken, because it ends in the error: checking for ld... /usr/bin/ld checking for path to top of build tree... ./configure: line 2651: -v0: command not found ./configure: line 2655: utils/pwd/pwd: No such file or directory configure: error: cannot determine current directory Upon inspection of the configure script, I found out that line 2651 uses the variable designating the ghc compiler. Are these bugs or am I messing things up? Regards, Philip

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1st call for participation AFP 2008, The Netherlands
by Peter Achten 04 Feb '08

04 Feb '08

1ST CALL FOR PARTICIPATION 6TH INTERNATIONAL SUMMER SCHOOL ON ADVANCED FUNCTIONAL PROGRAMMING 2008 (AFP ’08) RADBOUD UNIVERSITY NIJMEGEN AND UTRECHT UNIVERSITY, THE NETHERLANDS MAY 19-24, 2008 http://www.st.cs.ru.nl/AFP_TFP_2008/ AFP is a series of international summer schools which aims to bring computer scientists, in particular young researchers and programmers, up to date with the latest advances in practical advanced functional programming. Functional programming emphasizes the evaluation of expressions rather than the execution of commands. We focus on functional programming techniques in “programming in the real world” and bridge the gap between results presented at programming conferences and material from textbooks on functional programming. In this school you will receive in depth lectures about advanced functional programming techniques, taught by experts in the field. Lectures are accompanied by practical problems to be solved by the students at the school. AFP 2008 is hosted by the Radboud University Nijmegen, and Utrecht University, The Netherlands, and will be held in the rural setting of Center Parcs “Het Heijderbos”, Heijen (in the vicinity of Nijmegen), The Netherlands. AFP 2008 is co-located with the 9th Symposium on Trends in Functional Programming (TFP’08), which is held after AFP’08. PROGRAM INFORMATION The following speakers will give the lectures (in alphabetic order): Umut Acar (Toyota Technological Institute, University of Chicago, US) Richard Bird (University of Oxford, UK) Olivier Danvy (University of Aarhus, DK) Johan Jeuring (Utrecht University, NL) Mark Jones (Portland State University, US) Ulf Norell (Chalmers University, SE) Simon Peyton Jones (Microsoft Research, UK) Rinus Plasmeijer (Radboud University Nijmegen, NL) During the summer school, all participants receive printed lecture notes. Participants are expected to have a notebook, in order to be able to participate with the practical problems. After the summer school, all lecture notes will be revised, reviewed, and published in the LNCS series of Springer. All registered participants receive a copy of these lecture notes. VENUE INFORMATION AFP (and TFP) is held in The Netherlands, at Center Parcs “Het Heijderbos” which is a holiday resort in the woodlands near the city of Nijmegen. We accomodate participants in DeLuxe Cottages, each of which has three separate bed-rooms, shared bathroom, toilet, kitchen, and terrace. Cottages will be shared by three participants. If you wish to reduce costs, you can choose to share a bedroom. The summer school and symposium will take place in the business center of the venue. Breakfast, lunch and diner is included within the limits of the venue. The resort features, amongst others, a sub-tropical swimming pool (free for participants), restaurants, shops, water sports lake, midget golf court, squash court, and outdoor and indoor tennis courts. Nijmegen is considered to be the oldest city of the Netherlands, being approximately 2000 years old. Nijmegen is located at the east border of the Netherlands, near Germany. Nijmegen can be reached easily from several airports such as Schiphol airport, Eindhoven airport, and Düsseldorf airport, as well as by train and car. Conveniently close to Center Parcs “Het Heijderbos” you will find airport Weeze in Germany. The venue Center Parcs “Het Heijderbos” can be reached from Nijmegen by train to Boxmeer (25 minutes). From there you will need to order a taxi. The venue can also be reached by car: parking is free for participants of AFP and TFP. SUMMER SCHOOL FEES AFP 2008 includes accommodation, conference, breakfast – lunch – diner, speakers, and proceedings costs. The early registration fee is € 995; the late registration fee is € 1095. Please note that if you require financial support, you can apply for a grant (see below). GRANT INFORMATION We have taken great care to reduce the registration cost as much as possible. We can grant a subsidy for a limited number of PhD student participants for whom the costs are still too high. In order to apply for this subsidy, you need to send (by surface mail or e-mail) a request for subsidy which contains your personal information, affiliation, a description of your current status, project description, a motivation why you should receive the grant, and a recommendation from your PhD supervisor. This letter should arrive before april 7 2008 to: Rinus Plasmeijer Radboud University Nijmegen Toernooiveld 1 6525ED Nijmegen rinus(a)cs.ru.nl You will receive a notification whether your request has been granted before april 14 2008. REGISTRATION INFORMATION Early registration opens at march 1 2008. Late registration opens at april 15 2008. Registration closes at may 5 2008. We can not guarantee accommodation in case you wish to register later than may 5 2008. IMPORTANT DATES (ALL 2008) Early Registration Opens: March 1 Early Registration Deadline: April 14 Late Registration Opens: April 15 Late Registration Deadline: May 5 AFP Summer School: May 19-24 ORGANIZATION Programme Chair: Rinus Plasmeijer, Pieter Koopman, Radboud University Nijmegen, NL Doaitse Swierstra, Utrecht University, NL Arrangements: Peter Achten, Simone Meeuwsen, Radboud University Nijmegen, NL E-mail: afp_tfp_2008(a)cs.ru.nl

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Is GHC 6.8.2 on solaris 32 bits or 64 bits
by hsing-chou chen 04 Feb '08

04 Feb '08

Thank you for porting GHC 6.8.2 to solaris, I am assigned a job to make sure GHC run 64 bits on solaris. Is your solaris port 64 bits. Or it only 32 BITS. I know 32 bits GHC can still run on 64 bits solaris. However company want to run really 64 bits GHC on solaris. Thanks a lot if you can give me feedback. Sincerely, Hsing-chou chen

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A suggestion for GHC download pages
by Albert Y. C. Lai 03 Feb '08

03 Feb '08

On GHC version-specific download pages (e.g., http://www.haskell.org/ghc/download_ghc_682.html) under Source Distribution, it would reduce a major confusion of the form "I built GHC from source, now I use it, it says Network.CGI not found" if after the filename ghc-6.8.2-src.tar.bz2 it is also said "compiler and almost no libraries", and after the filename ghc-6.8.2-src-extralibs.tar.bz2 it is also said "most libraries, but it takes hours to build, Hackage has them piecemeal and more". Perhaps it would also be nice to say how to use the latter, e.g., "unpack this over the compiler source before building, before even building the compiler". Does it need to be said? Seems to be yes according my experience in #haskell. Here is how it can be misunderstood. Given the word "extralibs" and the file sizes, and no other words, what would an outsider think? Between the disproportionate 7MB and 2MB, 7MB must be because all the popular libraries are there, 2MB must be because "extralibs" means fringe, niche libraries. There lies the misunderstanding. Isn't it already said in the build guide? Yes it is, but the path between the download page and the build guide is not obvious. There is mention of the build guide, but it is put under the precondition "if your platform is not supported". IMO there should be no precondition; absolutely everyone building from source should be tempted to see the build guide. Perhaps the source section should also be close to the bottom of the download page, not to the top, reflecting what we recommend for most people.

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Deforesting edtiInt
by Robin Houston 03 Feb '08

03 Feb '08

Recently I wrote a short program that builds an array containing the number of divisors of the first 10^7 natural numbers. (Some of you can guess why I did this, but I won't say explicitly lest this post become a Googleable spoiler.) Here's the relevant part of the code. incElem a i = readArray a i >>= \n -> writeArray a i $! n+1 do -- Create an array with elements initialised to 0 a <- newArray (1,n) 0 :: ST s (STUArray s Int Word16) -- Populate the array forM_ [2..n] $ \i -> forM_ [i, i+i .. n] (incElem a) Of course there are more efficient algorithms for this, but this one has the merit of being extremely simple without being unreasonably slow. Except that it is a lot slower than it needs to be. After digging around a bit, I suspected that the reason for this is that the general form of enumeration [from, then .. to] does not benefit from the deforestation optimisation. When I added some deforestation rules to GHC/Enum.lhs and rebuilt the library, I found my suspicion confirmed: after the change, my code runs roughly twice as fast. Is there any reason not to do this? I attach a diff of the change I made, though I expect it could be done better by someone with experience of this sort of thing. Robin

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Re: [Haskell-cafe] strange GHC assembler failure
by Tim Chevalier 03 Feb '08

03 Feb '08

On 2/2/08, Tim Newsham <newsham(a)lava.net> wrote: > I'm getting a weird build error: > [ 9 of 95] Compiling Plugin.Pl.Common ( Plugin/Pl/Common.hs, > dist/build/lambdabot/lambdabot-tmp/Plugin/Pl/Common.o ) > /tmp/ghc52608_0/ghc52608_0.s: Assembler messages: > > /tmp/ghc52608_0/ghc52608_0.s:36:0: Error: unassigned file number 1 > [... more of these ...] > > I narrowed this down -- this happens when I add my new library > "silc-client" to the "Build-depends:" line in the cabal file even > if none of its code is referenced. Removing the dependency makes > the error go away. The module I'm referencing is a new one I'm > still working on and it makes use of FFI and references external > headers and libraries. > (I put a copy at http://www.thenewsh.com/~newsham/silc-client.tgz > if it helps anyone debug.. this is not release-quality code > though). > > Any idea what is going on here? > This would probably be a better question for ghc-users, since that's a lower-traffic list for GHC-specific questions. Redirected there. Cheers, Tim -- Tim Chevalier * http://cs.pdx.edu/~tjc * Often in error, never in doubt "Now, don't bother to flame me, because by the time you read this post I will be a different person from the one who wrote it. You cannot step in the same river twice." -- Sarah Barton

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Read instance of StdGen returns no parse
by Denis Bueno 02 Feb '08

02 Feb '08

Hi all, According to http://haskell.org/ghc/docs/latest/html/libraries/random/System-Random.html… the Read StdGen instance should never fail. However, in GHC 6.8.2, it appears to: > ghci GHCi, version 6.8.2: http://www.haskell.org/ghc/ :? for help Loading package base ... linking ... done. Prelude> :m System.Random Prelude System.Random> read "exsqueeze me" :: StdGen Loading package old-locale-1.0.0.0 ... linking ... done. Loading package old-time-1.0.0.0 ... linking ... done. Loading package random-1.0.0.0 ... linking ... done. *** Exception: Prelude.read: no parse Prelude System.Random> Leaving GHCi. It first fails for me on strings of length seven. Is this a bug, or have I done something wrong? -- Denis

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Second Call for Papers TFP 2008, The Netherlands
by Peter Achten 01 Feb '08

01 Feb '08

2ND CALL FOR PAPERS TRENDS IN FUNCTIONAL PROGRAMMING 2008 RADBOUD UNIVERSITY NIJMEGEN, THE NETHERLANDS MAY 26-28, 2008 INVITED SPEAKER: PROF. HENK BARENDREGT http://www.st.cs.ru.nl/AFP_TFP_2008/ The symposium on Trends in Functional Programming (TFP) is an international forum for researchers with interests in all aspects of functional programming languages, focusing on providing a broad view of current and future trends in Functional Programming. It aspires to be a lively environment for presenting the latest research results through acceptance by extended abstracts and full papers. A formal post-symposium refereeing process selects the best articles presented at the symposium for publication in a high-profile volume. TFP 2008 is hosted by the Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands, and will be held in the rural setting of Center Parcs “Het Heijderbos”, Heijen (in the vicinity of Nijmegen), The Netherlands. TFP 2008 is co-located with the 6th Int’l. Summer School on Advanced Functional Programming (AFP’08), which is held immediately before TFP’08. SCOPE OF THE SYMPOSIUM The symposium recognizes that new trends may arise through various routes. As part of the Symposium's focus on trends we therefore identify the following five article categories. High-quality articles are solicited in any of these categories: Research: leading-edge, previously unpublished research. Position: on what new trends should or should not be. Project: descriptions of recently started new projects. Evaluation: what lessons can be drawn from a finished project. Overview: summarizing work with respect to a trendy subject. Articles must be original and not submitted for simultaneous publication to any other forum. They may consider any aspect of functional programming: theoretical, implementation-oriented, or more experience-oriented. Applications of functional programming techniques to other languages are also within the scope of the symposium. Contributions on the following subject areas are particularly welcomed: * Dependently Typed Functional Programming * Validation and Verification of Functional Programs * Debugging for Functional Languages * Functional Programming and Security * Functional Programming and Mobility * Functional Programming to Animate/Prototype/Implement Systems from Formal or Semi-Formal Specifications * Functional Languages for Telecommunications Applications * Functional Languages for Embedded Systems * Functional Programming Applied to Global Computing * Functional GRIDs * Functional Programming Ideas in Imperative or Object-Oriented Settings (and the converse) * Interoperability with Imperative Programming Languages * Novel Memory Management Techniques * Parallel/Concurrent Functional Languages * Program Transformation Techniques * Empirical Performance Studies * Abstract/Virtual Machines and Compilers for Functional Languages * New Implementation Strategies * Any new emerging trend in the functional programming area If you are in doubt on whether your article is within the scope of TFP, please contact the TFP 2008 program chairs, Peter Achten and Pieter Koopman, at afp_tfp_2008(a)cs.ru.nl. SUBMISSION AND DRAFT PROCEEDINGS Acceptance of articles for presentation at the symposium is based on the review of full papers (15 pages) and extended abstracts (at least 3 pages) by the program committee. TFP encourages PhD students to submit papers. PhD students may request the program committee to provide extensive feedback on their full papers at the time of submission. Full papers describing work accepted for presentation must be completed before the symposium for publication in the draft proceedings and on-line. Further details can be found at the TFP 2008 website http://www.st.cs.ru.nl/AFP_TFP_2008/. POST-SYMPOSIUM REFEREEING AND PUBLICATION In addition to the draft symposium proceedings, we continue the TFP tradition of publishing a high-quality subset of contributions in the Intellect series on Trends in Functional Programming. IMPORTANT DATES (ALL 2008) Paper Submission: March 3 Notification of Acceptance: March 31 Early Registration Deadline: April 14 Late Registration Deadline: May 5 Camera Ready Symposium: May 5 TFP Symposium: May 26-28 Post Symposium Paper Submission: June 20 Notification of Acceptance: September 7 Camera Ready Revised Paper: September 21 PROGRAMME COMMITTEE Peter Achten (co-chair) Radboud Univ. Nijmegen, NL Andrew Butterfield Trinity College, IE Manuel Chakravarty Univ. of New South Wales, AU John Clements Cal Poly State Univ., USA Matthias Felleisen Northeastern Univ., USA Jurriaan Hage Utrecht Univ., NL Michael Hanus Christian-Albrechts Univ. zu Kiel, DE Ralf Hinze Univ. of Oxford, UK Graham Hutton Univ. of Nottingham, UK Johan Jeuring Utrecht Univ., NL Pieter Koopman (co-chair) Radboud Univ. Nijmegen, NL Shriram Krishnamurthi Brown Univ., USA Hans-Wolfgang Loidl Ludwig-Maximilians Univ.München, DE Rita Loogen Philipps-Univ. Marburg, DE Greg Michaelson Heriot-Watt Univ., UK Marco T. Morazán (symp. chair) Seton Hall Univ., USA Sven-Bodo Scholz Univ. of Hertfordshire, UK Ulrik Schultz Univ. of Southern Denmark, DK Clara Segura Univ. Complutense de Madrid, ES Olin Shivers Northeastern Univ., USA Phil Trinder Heriot-Watt Univ., UK Varmo Vene Univ. of Tartu, EE Viktória Zsók Eötvös Loránd Univ., HU ORGANIZATION Symposium Chair: Marco T. Morazán, Seton Hall University, USA Programme Chair: Peter Achten, Pieter Koopman, Radboud University Nijmegen, NL Treasurer: Greg Michaelson, Heriot-Watt University, UK

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Using "GHC as a library" with own functions makes runStmt return RunBreak
by Mads Lindstrøm 01 Feb '08

01 Feb '08

Hi I am trying to use "GHC as a library". From runStmt, I want to load and run functions from a home-grown module. Lets call my home-grown module HomeGrown.hs. I have tried to model my application after http://haskell.org/sitewiki/images/1/17/Interactive-6.8.hs / http://haskell.org/sitewiki/images/f/f9/MyPrelude.hs from http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/GHC/As_a_library . This library loads MyPrelude.hs and runs myPutStrLn & myGetLine + more. However, when I try to run code from HomeGrown.hs like: runStmt session "HomeGrown.foo" GHC.SingleStep runStmt keeps returning RunBreak (of type RunResult). From what I can read of the WWW, RunBreak is related to some debugger and indicate that GHC encountered some breakpoint. However, I did not set any break points. Comparing Interactive-6.8 and MyPrelude.hs to my own code, the largest difference seemed to be that Interactive-6.8 do not only use MyPrelude.hs by calling `addTarget` and `setContext`, it also imports MyPrelude.hs as a regular Haskell import (import MyPrelude). Thus I tried to remove this import to see what would happen. Interactive-6.8 compiled and started just fine. However, whenever it needed to use any functions in MyPrelude, runStmt also returned RunBreak. So is it only possible to load home-grown/non-standard modules when also doing a regular import? Greetings, Mads Lindstrøm

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GHC on Solaris Nevada
by Felix Martini 28 Jan '08

28 Jan '08

Hello all, I am trying to get a working GHC on Solaris Nevada (Solaris 11). I've tried the binary versions for Solaris 10 made by Christian Maeder. I couldn't get GHC 6.8.2 to install properly and GHC 6.6 does not work (it crashes the moment it needs to link to a library). After that i tried to make an unregistered bootstrap of GHC 6.6 using Linux as the host OS. The bootstrapping failed on Solaris when making genapply or cabal-setup. The linker reports symbol referencing errors. Has someone already successfully build GHC on Solaris 11? Regards, Felix

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