Re: [Haskell-cafe] SoC project: advice requested

2011/4/1 Johan Tibell :

Hi Gábor,

There are a few non-Cabal projects on the ideas list (http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/summer-of-code/report/1). Just thought I mentioned it in case you missed it.

I saw it :)

2011/4/1 Gábor Lehel :

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Alternately, I'd be very happy to receive suggestions about other GHC-related work which would be considered appropriate. (Or, heck, any other compiler.)

Perhaps you could send an email to the GHC mailing list and ask if they have any good GSoC projects? I'm not sure the Simons are reading every post on this list.

Oh, hmm. Good idea. Should've cross-posted from the beginning :|. What's the accepted etiquette here? Forward the original message? Send a short heads-up with a link to this thread in the archives?

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A related problem is that, having done only minimal GHC hacking so far, drawing up a detailed plan / design in advance as part of the proposal would be difficult. If this is considered necessary and there is someone willing to mentor the project I'd be happy to research the problem in advance of the submission deadline so I can submit a more detailed proposal. Alternately, if it's deemed acceptable to learn the ropes / come up to speed as part of the SoC itself that's fine by me as well. (Wasn't this sort of the point originally?)

It's not required but it helps. Us mentors need to figure out if you're likely to finish your project or not. Showing that you understand what needs to be done is a good sign. If you're not sure what needs to be done there's still a chance you'll get accepted if people who already know GHC thinks one summer is enough time to both get familiar with GHC and add something worthwhile.

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Background info: I've taken part in the SoC once before, back in 2006 (when I applied to KDE to work on Krita). I don't yet have any Hackage packages to my name, however I'm working on a C++-to-Haskell bindings generator for my bachelor's thesis (the primary target being Qt*) which is likely to spawn quite a few. (I've avoided making any noise about this because I didn't want to put the cart before the horse: the plan was (and still is) to announce something once there is something worth announcing, and it's not at that point quite yet.)

How about adding Haskell support for SWIG? Being able to call C++ libraries from Haskell would be very useful.

Maybe I have a case of NIH, but I'm not very familiar with SWIG either :). None of the other Qt/KDE bindings for other languages use it, and as far as I can remember the rationale was that it's too limited. Based on this assumption I never felt the inclination to learn about it, either. That said, "being able to call C++ from Haskell" is pretty much what the bindings generator I'm working on aims to accomplish. (For certain kinds of libraries -- object-oriented ones which make only limited use of templates, essentially.) Adding C++ support to the FFI (per my previous message) would still have considerable value-added in comparison to this -- not having to call a generator is always a plus, and it would also be somewhat orthogonal and lower-level (parts of the generated bindings could be switched over to use it internally, for example).

Cheers, Johan

-- Work is punishment for failing to procrastinate effectively.