Hi
DrIFT is a preproxessor so it makes the build process more complex. I'd like to find a pure-haskell solution or a TH solution that doesn't require more build complexity.
You might want to look at the Data.Derive system. Basically it's a giant library of helpers for writing TH-based derivations.
As Stefan says, you virtually described Data.Derive :)
It has a few other cool features, like an automated guesser for sufficiently regular classes.
A very cool feature, its touched on in the user manual, but I want to write more on this :-) Basically we don't need to specify how to write various derivations - we just write an example and it guesses at what the derivation is. Examples for which we can guess include Data, Eq, Ord, Serial, Arbitrary ....
It's still in the cleanup-for-release stage, so any questions should not be hesitated on!
Homepage: http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/~ndm/derive/ Manual: http://www.cs.york.ac.uk/fp/darcs/derive/derive.htm It is very much in the clean up for release stage - I'm hoping to get it released in the next few days (it requires GHC 6.6 at the mo, making it 6.4.2 compatible is one of the tasks on the list, but thats about it). If you find anything else that needs polishing, do shout! As of earlier today, Yhc uses Derive instead of DrIFT - and it made some bits quite a lot simpler. Thanks Neil