tomahawkins:
A few years ago I attempted to build a Haskell hardware compiler (Haskell -> Verilog) based on the Yhc frontent. At the time I was trying to overcome several problems [1] with implementing a hardware description language as a light eDSL, which convinced me a proper compiler may be a better approach. Yhc was recommended as a good starting point since it had a simpler IR compared with GHC -- at least at the time.
I am considering restarting this effort, but this time to target hard realtime embedded code. What is the recommended compiler to start from? I need an IR that is post type checking with as much desugaring as possible, and a code base that is relatively easy to splice and build.
My other requirement is not to be bound to IO () for 'main'. The top level will be a monad, but with different semantics than IO. I would also like to reuse the standard library, with exception to the values related to IO.
What are my options?
Have you looked at Clash, the GHC to VHDL compiler?