- Haskell-Cafe - Haskell.org

Re: [Haskell-cafe] off-topic question: why invent new Haskell-like compile-to-js functional languages when we have awesome js_of_ocaml ?
by Hans Höglund 12 Nov '13

12 Nov '13

It is actually confirmed that GHCJS will go into an official GHC release? I have not been able to find that information on the GHC tracker. I have tried GHCJS, Haste and the UHC-JS in the past and found Haste the most easy to install and use. As far as I know, GHCJS and Haste are the only compilers to support all GHC extensions. Of course, this actualizes that old question of whether pervasive use of GHC-only extensions is A Good Thing... yet still I keep finding {-# LANGUAGE DeriveTraversable, ViewPatterns, TypeFamilies … #-} on top of my source files. Regards, Hans On Mon, Nov 11, 2013 at 2:37 PM, Brandon Allbery <allbery.b(a)gmail.com>wrote: > On Mon, Nov 11, 2013 at 2:32 PM, ?mer Sinan A?acan <omeragacan(a)gmail.com>wrote: > >> I'm aware of this, but when I first tried it a few months ago, it was >> not easy to use at all. Is it changed now? >> > > The biggest bump in usability will come from it not being just in HEAD > with everything about building it that that implies. (next release of GHC > will have it) > > -- > brandon s allbery kf8nh sine nomine > associates > allbery.b(a)gmail.com > ballbery(a)sinenomine.net > unix, openafs, kerberos, infrastructure, xmonad > http://sinenomine.net > > _______________________________________________ > Haskell-Cafe mailing list > Haskell-Cafe(a)haskell.org > http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe >

2 1

Looking for feedback on my Haskell game programming paper
by Alexander Berntsen 11 Nov '13

11 Nov '13

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA256 Someone suggested I posted this here: <https://secure.plaimi.net/~alexander/tmp/main.pdf>. "This" being an informal introduction to game programming in Haskell, aimed at game programmers used to C or C-likes. I and a fellow student originally wrote it for a class, but someone (someone else than the first someone) found the URL and posted it on Reddit[0], and various other people have read it as well -- so we already have some feedback to go on. But we welcome more feedback. It has yet to be shared outside of the Haskell community, as I would like to polish it first, and reach a 1.0 version. (Hopefully this week!) The game presented in the paper is far from finished. We aim towards a full-blown but small game. It should have multi-player, AI, networking, somewhat complicated physics, control handling, menus, a graphics system, and so on and so forth. Basically it should cover "everything", but still be small enough to serve as an example. Contributions to the game itself would be also be greatly appreciated. Its source is available on GitHub[1]. [0] <http://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/1q1b9f/plaimis_introduction_to_has…> [1] <http://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/1q1b9f/plaimis_introduction_to_has…> - -- Alexander alexander(a)plaimi.net http://plaimi.net/~alexander -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.22 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://www.enigmail.net/ iF4EAREIAAYFAlKBa34ACgkQRtClrXBQc7UDGgEAtTF83DTlLM8eR68hGhgJTxj3 1sygYsqNQae3Zm5KbMcA/RfwyqyWzBgOOyeuI0JpSToWuh1ex2ILFcPdjX5nR6X7 =f0mJ -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

1 0

Quickcheck generator help
by Graham Berks 11 Nov '13

11 Nov '13

Hi, have the following type data BinomialHeap a = EmptyHeap | Node a Int (BinomialHeap a) and wanted to create a test generator with type ‘a’ as an Int for example hence had newtype BinominalHeapInt = BinominalHeap Int deriving (Eq, Show) But struggling to get the generator correct, currently have instance Arbitrary BinominalHeapInt where arbitrary = sized heap' where heap' 0 = return EmptyHeap heap' n | n>0 = oneof [return EmptyHeap, liftM3 Node arbitrary arbitrary subnode] where subnode = heap' (n `div` 2) But it complains Expected type: Int -> Gen BinominalHeapInt Actual type: Int -> Gen (BinomialHeap a1) in sized heap’ Any pointers ? Thanks

2 1

New: Haskell meeting in Regensburg, 2013-11-12, 20:00
by Andres Löh 11 Nov '13

11 Nov '13

Hi. There's a new monthly Haskell meeting in Regensburg, Bavaria, Germany. Tomorrow will be our third meeting, and the first one with a Haskell talk: Tuesday, 12 November 2013 20:00 Plan 9, Werftstraße 15, 93059 Regensburg There'll be a short presentation by Martin Ruderer on how to solve problems such as the n-queens problem in Haskell. In addition, there's time for informal discussions and drinks. Everyone who's interested in Haskell is welcome. No actual knowledge of Haskell is expected or required. We'll speak German and/or English, depending on who's going to be there. If you'd like to get updates about future Regensburg Haskell meetings or vote on when we meet next, please join our mailing list at http://lists.binary-kitchen.de/listinfo/haskell If you have any questions and for some reason don't want to join the mailing list, you can also email me :) Hope to see many of you tomorrow. Cheers, Andres

1 0

idea: ratings (or maybe comments) for packages in hackage
by Ömer Sinan Ağacan 11 Nov '13

11 Nov '13

Hi all, The following is happening to me very often: - I decide to do some work in Haskell and decide to do it using a library. - I go to hackage and search for some keywords, find 10 different packages that does similar things. - In that moment, I need to apply some heuristics to decide which package to use. When my heuristics don't end up with only one package, I go to Haskell IRC channel and ask people there to which library to use. My heuristic is something like: - Look if author/maintainer is well-known people in Haskell community that are already produced very high-quality libraries. - Make sure it's currently maintained(updated at least in past few months) - Make sure it has Github repository. - some other stuff like that. These heuristics are not working great, most of the time I'm ending up with IRC channel. So my proposal is this: Why not have a rating/comment system for packages in hackage, so that when I need to find a library for something I can just look to comments or ratings to see how complete/well-implemented or what does it good for etc. (for example, we have several high quality xml parsers, some of them are for performance while some of them aiming for being easy to use) Any comments would be appreciated. --- Ömer Sinan Ağacan http://osa1.net

14 22

Haskell talks at Code Mesh London 3-5 Dec - Early Bird ends in 3 days
by Andra Dinu 11 Nov '13

11 Nov '13

Hi, Between the 4th and 5th of December, inventors and users of the most discussed technologies of the moment will gather in London for the second edition of Code Mesh - The Alternative Programming Conference. Haskell talks include: * Haskell at Barclays: Exotic Tools for Exotic Trades - http://codemesh.io/index.html#tim-williams * The Haxl Project at Facebook - http://codemesh.io/index.html#simon-marlow * Haskell in the Newsroom - http://codemesh.io/index.html#erik-hinton Other languages discussed: Clojure, Erlang, Elixir, Rust, Julia and more! Among the 50 speakers you will also find Ruby guru and author of 'The Pragmatic Programmer' Dave Thomas, Erlang co-inventor Joe Armstrong, Elixir creator José Valim, Akka inventor Jonas Bonér, creator of the Parallela board Andreas Olofsson, creator of Catnip IDE Bodil Stokke, co-inventor of Julia Stefan Karpinski, Clojure experts Carin Meijer and Timothy Baldridge, creator of ZeroMQ Pieter Hintjens, as well as O'Reilly authors such as Francesco Cesarini and Dean Wampler. Check out the entire programme on the conference website: http://codemesh.io/ Thanks, Andra -- Andra Dinu Community & Social ERLANG SOLUTIONS LTD New Loom House 101 Back Church Lane London, E1 1LU United Kingdom Tel +44(0)2076550344 Mob +44(0)7983484387 www.erlang-solutions.com

1 0

Installing pandoc without root
by Theo Moore 10 Nov '13

10 Nov '13

I am trying to install the Haskell libraries for pandoc on a local home folder and without root access, using the command: cabal install pandoc However, I run into the error: cabal: Missing dependency on a foreign library: * Missing (or bad) header file: zlib.h * Missing C library: z >From what I understand, I need to install zlib1g-dev. GHC and cabal install are available, but without root access I'm having trouble figuring out how to provide the necessary zlib files. I've tried to download the source of zlib1g-dev, but in order to compile it, I have to use "make" which I do not have the priviledge to invoke. Can someone guide me through getting pandoc up and running without root access? The system is Debian 3.2.41-2 x86_64 GNU/Linux.

4 6

Expressing "self-composable" functions at the type level
by Ignas Vyšniauskas 10 Nov '13

10 Nov '13

Hi, I'm wondering if there's some way to express that a function can be composed with itself at the type level. Due to polymorphism this is not quite the same as saying that the domain and co-domain match. Example: swap :: (a, b) -> (b, a) swap . swap :: (a, b) -> (a, b) I'd like to write a function such as (in pseudocode): involute :: ((a -> b) &&& (b -> a)) -> (a -> a) involute f = f . f But I obviously can't write down the type for (a -> b) &&& (b -> a) Perhaps this can be done with some typeclass hackery? -- Ignas

3 4

Re: [Haskell-cafe] IDE
by Schell Scivally 09 Nov '13

09 Nov '13

I use vim for all dev work except iOS. Specifically I use MacVim on OS X and GVim on Linux. Once I switched to vim I never looked back. Here are some plugins that I use: http://github.com/gmarik/vundle -- Package manager http://github.com/Shougo/vimproc -- Required for ghcmod-vim http://github.com/Shougo/neocomplcache -- Completion http://github.com/Shougo/neosnippet -- Snippets http://github.com/schell/vim-snippets -- Snippets http://github.com/scrooloose/syntastic -- Syntax checking http://github.com/scrooloose/nerdtree -- File drawer http://github.com/altercation/vim-colors-solarized -- Color theme http://github.com/ujihisa/neco-ghc -- Haskell completion for neocomplcache http://github.com/tpope/vim-fugitive.git-- Git integration http://github.com/kien/ctrlp.vim -- Sublime text's anything command (quick goto) http://github.com/Lokaltog/vim-powerline-- Status line http://github.com/majutsushi/tagbar -- Symbol goto based on ctags http://github.com/kana/vim-fakeclip -- OS X clipboard support http://github.com/flazz/vim-colorschemes-- More colorschemes http://github.com/eagletmt/ghcmod-vim -- Syntax/compilation checking, quickfix integration http://github.com/travitch/hasksyn -- Better haskell syntax coloring http://github.com/dag/vim2hs -- More haskell syntax coloring I have a lot of Haskell syntax plugins and some of those may be conflicting, IDK, but it works well IMO. Using all that I get a pretty good IDE feeling when developing in Haskell. I also use a tool called steeloverseer that I wrote to continuously compile my cabal projects. If you're interested it's on hackage and you can read the readme at https://github.com/schell/steeloverseer/. I hope that helps!

1 0

float show instances
by Evan Laforge 09 Nov '13

09 Nov '13

Ok, here's a bit of shameless bike-sheddery, so feel free to move on if you don't have time for that kind of thing. It seems silly, but this is something that's been bothering me for something like 5 years now, namely that ghc's float show instance is very aggressive about resorting to scientific notation for numbers below 1. If you get to 0.01 it writes it as 1.0e-2. Python and ruby, by comparison, have the cutoff at 1e-5. But it's only for <1, if you go higher you have to get all the way up to 1.0e7 before it goes exponential (python and ruby are even more reluctant: 1e16 and 1e14 respectively). This little detail has been a constant low-grade hassle for me because I don't read scientific notation fluently, and it's hard for me to see relative magnitudes in a big chunk of floats. In the past I've resorted to copy pasting a list into a python prompt or a separate pretty printer program, and in the present I have my own replacement for Show that is less aggressive with scientific notation, in addition to other things. So I was wondering, was this a considered design choice, or just the preference of the person who happened to write Show Float and Show Double way back when? Are there people who read scientific notation just as easily as positional (and if so, would they prefer to see 100 as 1e3)? Is there hope that if I look at it enough maybe someday it'll be clear to me too? I'm not actually expecting anyone will say "why didn't we think of that, let's change it right away", but I'm curious about how it came about, and whether other people have resorted to as drastic measures as I have. As an aside, I've noticed that when I'm debugging, the formatting of the output is very important. Surprisingly so. It's worth it for me to spend extra time making test and debugging output minimal and clear, otherwise my brain is already overtaxed trying to understand the problem, and just can't handle extra load like skipping irrelevant data, figuring out scientific notation, and even trying to figure out where the breaks are in un-spaced output. Maybe a personal quirk.

5 5