On Wed, Nov 11, 2009 at 01:47:43PM -0500, Lennart Augustsson wrote:
Do you use jhc when you develop jhc? I.e., does it compile itself. For me, this is the litmus test of when a compiler has become usable. I mean, if even the developers of a compiler don't use it themselves, why should anyone else? :)
Well, this touches on another issue, and that is that jhc is a native cross-compiler. It never behaves differently if compiled by another haskell compiler or is compiled on an alternate platform. There is never a need to 'bootstrap' it, once you have jhc running anywhere then it is as good as it would be if it is running everywhere. So to me, self-hosting has never been a big issue as it doesn't provide any direct "material" benefit. My time is better spent implementing more extensions or improving the back end. Of course, if jhc were to have a back-end that ghc didn't support that was a useful platform for jhc to run on, then it would be a different story. There would be a direct material benefit to having jhc being self-hosting so it would become a priority. John -- John Meacham - ⑆repetae.net⑆john⑈ - http://notanumber.net/