I've been eyeing LLVM[1] as interesting technology -- brief executive summary: a virtual machine suited as the back end of compiler output with optimised native code then coming from it as either JIT-based execution of the LLVM bytecode or as a further compilation step -- and couldn't help but immediately think of the possibility of one of the Haskell compiler projects providing an LLVM code generator.  I think this would help in several areas:

• it could make porting the compiler to other architectures -- including oddball ones that would be too small to otherwise support -- easier;
• it could help remove the nigh-ubiquitous reliance upon GCC as a back-end (while I think that GCC is a pretty good piece of software, I'm not sure it's really suited to its current role as the "do-everything" back end);
• it could leverage some of the really interesting work that's going on in optimisation technology by letting one VM's optimiser do the work for any number of languages;
• it could improve interaction between source code written in multiple languages.

Is this me opening up a Pandora's Box of ignorance here?  Or is LLVM potentially interesting?  (And were someone motivated into perhaps trying to make an LLVM back-end, where would one start to poke around in, say, the GHC codebase to even begin to implement this?  And how insane would they be driven by the process?)

[1]http://llvm.org

--  Michael T. Richter Email: ttmrichter@gmail.com, mtr1966@hotpop.com MSN: ttmrichter@hotmail.com, mtr1966@hotmail.com; YIM: michael_richter_1966; AIM: YanJiahua1966; ICQ: 241960658; Jabber: mtr1966@jabber.cn "I have never seen the poor people being so familiar with their heads of state as they were with [Michele Duvalier]. It was a beautiful lesson for me. I've learned something from it." --Mother Theresa