September 2014 - Haskell-Cafe

ANN: HacBerlin - Haskell Hackathon in Berlin, 26-28 Sep 2014
by Stefan Wehr 17 Sep '14

17 Sep '14

Hi everyone, this is just a quick reminder: The Haskell Hackathon in Berlin starts in 9 days and there are very few places left. Please register now: http://goo.gl/aLfnWu Where: Berlin, Germany When: Fri 26 - Sun 28 September 2014 We will do lots of Haskell hacking and listen to two excellent talks: * Beyond Parsec -- Revisiting Parser Combinators, by Andres Löh * Chordify: Advanced Functional Programming for Fun and Profit, by José Pedro Magalhães Meet in Berlin, discuss, hack together and improve the Haskell infrastructure. We welcome all programmers interested in Haskell, beginners and experts! For all details, visit our wiki page (http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/HacBerlin2014) and make sure to register now! Cheers, Stefan

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a question about cabal files
by Kazu Yamamoto 17 Sep '14

17 Sep '14

Hi cafe, I'm developing a library. In this package, some tools for development are included. I would like to compile these tools when I'm developing but I don't want users to compile them. Are there any ways to express such modes in cabal files? ("Executable" cannot be located under "if".) Or should I prepare a separated package for the development tools? Regards, --Kazu

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Re: [Haskell-cafe] Categorical description for vector-space instance of AdditiveGroup (Maybe a)
by trevor cook 17 Sep '14

17 Sep '14

Jason, John, Thanks for the in depth descriptions, it was just what I was looking for. Trevor

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Hackage package "synopsis" sections
by Richard Lewis 17 Sep '14

17 Sep '14

Hi there, If any of you have ever used CPAN you may agree with me that the synopsis sections customarily included in each package's POD are generally invaluable for getting a quick overview of how to use the facilities provided by that package. I wonder if we might be able to encourage the Hackage community to do something similar? Perhaps in the cabal description authors could include a synopsis with a few code examples? Obviously, I ought to start the ball rolling but I don't actually have any code published on Hackage. Any thoughts? Richard -- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Richard Lewis @lewisrichard http://web.rjlewis.me.uk/ -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

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Hello and type-level SKI
by Tslil Clingman 17 Sep '14

17 Sep '14

Greetings all, I've been reading this list for a short while and I thought I'd like to begin to contribute where possible. This message pretty much serves to say: - Hello, Haskell! - This community is great, and it's always been a great pleasure to read the newsgroup(s) - Here is a small and likely multiply re-re-discovered `proof' of why the type system is Turing Complete > {-# LANGUAGE MultiParamTypeClasses, FunctionalDependencies, > FlexibleInstances, FlexibleContexts, UndecidableInstances #-} > data S2 x y > data S1 x > data S > data K1 x > data K > data I > class Apply a b c | a b -> c > instance Apply K x (K1 x) > instance Apply S x (S1 x) > instance Apply (S1 x) y (S2 x y) > instance Apply I x x > instance Apply (K1 x) y x > instance (Apply x z xz, Apply y z yz, Apply xz yz a) => Apply (S2 x y) z a > -- The core function > apply :: (Apply a b c) => a -> b -> c > apply _ _ = undefined > -- Hereendeththelesson -- > -- For `ease of use', but not strictly necessary > data X > data Y > data Z > s = undefined :: S > k = undefined :: K > i = undefined :: I > x = undefined :: X > y = undefined :: Y > z = undefined :: Z > -- Example > reverse = apply (apply s (apply k (apply s i))) k I just thought I'd share this snippet here, but if this is not the right place, or it's too long or something please don't hesitate to let me know. Thanks for your attention, Yours &c., Tslil

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Re: [Haskell-cafe] Temporarily taking over hdevtools on Hackage
by Schell Scivally 16 Sep '14

16 Sep '14

I talked with Erik the admin@hackage about taking over hdevtools and he suggested waiting another week before invading. In the meantime he suggested asking a hackage trustee to please upload this git branch to hackage (https://github.com/schell/hdevtools/tree/cabal-support-ghc7.8) Thank you and let me know if there is anything else I can do to help! -- Schell Scivally | github <https://github.com/schell> | twitter <http://twitter.com/schellsan> | blog <http://efnx.com> | wiki <http://wiki.zyghost.com>

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Re: [Haskell-cafe] Hackage package "synopsis" sections
by Britt Mathis 16 Sep '14

16 Sep '14

I meant to post this about 30 minutes ago, but I accidentally sent it only to Michael Snoyman. It seems to me that there are two use cases here - documentation inside code and documentation that stands alone. I agree with you, Michael, that there is no reason why you shouldn't be able to use whichever documentation method you prefer in your readme file. Since it stands alone, it should be trivial to include support for a multitude of formats and display the resulting documentation on Hackage. I think where Mateusz' opinion differs is on the inclusion of markdown in source files (correct me if I am wrong): > More importantly, Markdown > is not suited for documenting code. We'd have to introduce new > identifiers if we wanted to link to some functions from our synopsis. > 16th standard aside, this is quickly starts looking like Haddock. As he says, there are problems with using markdown this way. I think it would be beneficial to have a defacto standard for documentation that lives inside source files - this would prevent it from changing from file to file and provide consistency across the community's code-base. Because the haskell community controls haddock it is in a better position to evolve to our needs. Some flavor of markdown that has a user-base outside the haskell community may not be willing to incorporate changes that make it a better fit for living inside haskell source files, so we would have to maintain our own fork of it anyway. Why duplicate the work that has already been done? I think if the community has a problem with haddock syntax that can be discussed and, if need be, changed. But I do believe that there should be consistency in source file documentation. The last problem I see is the cabal problem. It seems that cabal has trouble handling edge cases, and I think that is again something we can work on (I may even look into it myself - I have been looking for a project). It seems like it would be a good idea to only include small blurbs about the project in the .cabal file, and to separate the larger documentation into a README file, like is done on github. The reasoning behind this is two-fold: 1) Cabal files are human readable. They give us insight into the dependencies a project requires, and including full documentation here would make it harder to get a quick overview of the project (I know most people use hackage for this, but cabal was chosen over formats like XML specifically because it was meant to be read and understood by humans). 2) Separating the README file allows users to choose their favorite format, and be certain that it will be formatted as it was intended (cabal can't be expected to handle every edge case of every format - there are far too many, and Pandoc already does a great job translating between formats).

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[ANN] accelerate-0.15
by Trevor L. McDonell 16 Sep '14

16 Sep '14

Friends, I am pleased to announce the release of the Accelerate 0.15 family of packages. Accelerate defines an embedded language of array computations for high performance computing in Haskell. Computations on multi-dimensional, regular arrays are expressed in the form of parameterised collective operations, such as maps, reductions, and permutations. These computations may then be online compiled and executed on a range of architectures, such as GPUs. This release brings mainly bug fixes and performance improvements. The following packages are available on Hackage: accelerate The language definition and reference implementation accelerate-cuda A high performance parallel backend targeting NVIDIA GPUs accelerate-io Fast conversion between Accelerate arrays and other formats, including ‘vector’ and ‘repa’. accelerate-fft Discrete Fourier transforms, backed by CUFFT where available accelerate-examples Computational kernels and applications showcasing Accelerate The code can be found on GitHub, where you can also submit issues: https://github.com/AccelerateHS https://github.com/AccelerateHS/accelerate/issues Finally, there is also a mailing list that can be used for both use and development discussions: accelerate-haskell(a)googlegroups.com http://groups.google.com/group/accelerate-haskell -The Accelerate Team

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Type union
by Dmitry Bogatov 15 Sep '14

15 Sep '14

Hello! I am trying to create type safe boolean formula representation. Main operation is substion of particular value, to get another formula, and function that accept formula to calculate it's value. So target is: a = Conjunction (Var X) (Var Y) is 2 variable formula value (apply (X, True) . apply (Y, True) $ a) -- True and neither value a apply (X, True) . apply (X, False) $ a typechecks. How can I archive it? class Union a b c instance (a ~ b) => Union a b b instance Union a b (a, b) data P = P deriving Show data Q = Q deriving Show class (Show a) => Variable a instance Variable P instance Variable Q data Formula t where Prop :: (Variable b) => b -> Formula b Conjunction :: (Union t1 t2 t3) => Formula t1 -> Formula t2 -> Formula t3 deriving instance Show (Formula t) main = print (Conjunction (Prop P) (Prop Q) :: Int) This complains on ambitious t3. Attempt by typefamilies fails, since type family Union t1 t2 :: * data Void type instance Union a a = a type instance Union (a, b) a = (a, b) type instance Union (a, b) b = (a, b) type instance Union (a, b) c = (a, b, c) type instance Union a (a, b) = (a, b) type instance Union b (a, b) = (a, b) type instance Union c (a, b) = (a, b, c) type instance Union (a, b, c) a = (a, b, c) type instance Union (a, b, c) b = (a, b, c) type instance Union (a, b, c) c = (a, b, c) type instance Union (a, b, c) d = Void type instance Union a (a, b, c) = (a, b, c) type instance Union b (a, b, c) = (a, b, c) type instance Union c (a, b, c) = (a, b, c) type instance Union d (a, b, c) = Void this is somewhy conflicting instances. I am out of ideas. -- Best regards, Dmitry Bogatov <KAction(a)gnu.org>, Free Software supporter, esperantisto and netiquette guardian. GPG: 54B7F00D

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Using cabal repl with tests
by Arnaud Bailly 15 Sep '14

15 Sep '14

Hello, I have a classical project with cabal file split between a library, an executable and a test-suite. When I run `cabal repl` I got all modules from the library loaded, which is somewhat logical. I would like to launch a repl with test modules loaded, how can I achieve this? Adding `--enable-tests` does not help for the repl... Thanks, -- Arnaud Bailly FoldLabs Associate: http://foldlabs.com

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