Hi, I am a student interested in participating in this year's SoC. At http://tsk.ch.uj.edu.pl/~janeczek/socapp.html (and also below in this email) you can find a draft of my project proposal. I'd like to ask you to comment on it, especially the deliverables part. Are you interested in such a project, and if yes, what features would be most important to you? Is anything missing, or should something get more priority or attention? Regards, Michal Python-Haskell bridge ===================== Description ----------- This project will seek to provide a comprehensive, high level (and thus easy to use) binding between Haskell and Python programming languages. This will allow using libraries of either side from each language. Benefits for Python ------------------- * Robust, high assurance components It might be beneficial to implement safety-critical components in a strongly, statically typed language, using Python to keep them together. Cryptography or authentication modules can be an example. * Performance improvements for speed-critical code Haskell compiled to native code is typically an order of magnitude faster than Python. Aside from that, advanced language features (such as multicore parallel runtime, very lightweight threads and software transactional memory) further serve in improving the performance. Haskell could become a safe, high level alternative to commonly used C extensions. * Access to sophisticated libraries While its set of libraries is not as comprehensive as that of Python, Haskell can still offer some well tested, efficient libraries. Examples might be rich parser combinator libraries (like Parsec) and persistent, functional data structures. QuickCheck testing library could also be used to drive analysis of Python code. Benefits for Haskell -------------------- The project would benefit Haskell by providing it with access to an impressive suite of libraries. It also has a potential to help Haskell adoption, by mitigating risk of using Haskell in a project. Deliverables ------------ * A low level library to access Python objects from Haskell * A set of low level functions to convert built-in data types between Haskell and Python (strings, numbers, lists, dictionaries, functions, generators etc.) * A higher level library allowing easy (transparent) access to Python functions from Haskell, and wrapping Haskell functions for Python to access * A way to easily derive conversion functions for user-defined data types/objects. Functions derived in such a way should work well with both low level and high level access libraries * Documentation and a set of examples for all of above Optional goals -------------- These are of lower priority, and might require a fair amount of work. I would like to implement most of them, if technically feasible. If they don't fit into Summer of Code timeframe, I am planning to finish afterwards. * A Python module for accessing functions from Haskell modules without manual wrapping (such wrapping should be already easy thanks to the high level library). It'd be accomplished through GHC api - if it allows it. The Haskell side of the high level library will already support such mode of operation * Extend and refactor the code, to make it support other similar dynamic languages. This is a lot of work, and definitely out of the scope of Summer of Code project, but some design decisions may be influenced by this. Related projects ---------------- They (and quite possibly some others) will be referenced for ideas. * MissingPy Provides a one way, low level binding to Python. Some of the code can be possibly reused, especially data conversion functions. It doesn't seem to export all features, in particular function callbacks are not supported * HaXR XML-RPC binding for Haskell. It could provide inspiration for reconciling Haskell and Python type systems, resulting in a friendly interface * rocaml A binding between Ruby and OCaml