Wish list for GHC API tooling support

At the moment the GHC API is a sort of poor relation in the haskell world, where it could be a significantly useful resource for the growing list of haskell tool providers. Based on my experiences with HaRe, I have started putting together a wish list of features I would like to see in it, which is here https://github.com/fpco/haskell-ide/wiki/GHC-API I welcome feedback / discussion on this. Regards Alan

Based on my experiences with HaRe, I have started putting together a wish list of features I would like to see in it, which is here https://github.com/fpco/haskell-ide/wiki/GHC-API Just to say: I really support having this discussion. The GHC API is not driven enough by the needs of its clients. I think that a client can actually access pretty much any function inside GHC, so no wonder the API feels unstable! Steps forward might be: · Be very clear which functions are part of the official API. I think it’s the ones exported by GHC.lhs · Review them to check they all make sense · Add good Haddock documentation for each of them · Make sure that each is marked, at its definition site, as part of the GHC API. At the moment it is far from clear when one is modifying a function that is part of the GHC API, since most of these functions aren’t in GHC.lhs I’m happy to help, but not as a driving force. Thanks! Simon From: Haskell-Cafe [mailto:haskell-cafe-bounces@haskell.org] On Behalf Of Alan & Kim Zimmerman Sent: 18 August 2014 09:06 To: haskell Subject: [Haskell-cafe] Wish list for GHC API tooling support At the moment the GHC API is a sort of poor relation in the haskell world, where it could be a significantly useful resource for the growing list of haskell tool providers. Based on my experiences with HaRe, I have started putting together a wish list of features I would like to see in it, which is here https://github.com/fpco/haskell-ide/wiki/GHC-API I welcome feedback / discussion on this. Regards Alan

Alan & Kim Zimmerman wrote:
At the moment the GHC API is a sort of poor relation in the haskell world, where it could be a significantly useful resource for the growing list of haskell tool providers.
Based on my experiences with HaRe, I have started putting together a wish list of features I would like to see in it, which is here https://github.com/fpco/haskell-ide/wiki/GHC-API
Projects like the haskell-suite[1] and hint[2] offer more stable alternatives to analyzing and executing Haskell code. GHC is simply a fast moving target, which I think is a good idea from a feature point of view, but it does make it difficult to offer a stable API. [1]: https://github.com/haskell-suite [2]: http://hackage.haskell.org/package/hint Best regards, Heinrich Apfelmus -- http://apfelmus.nfshost.com
participants (3)
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Alan & Kim Zimmerman
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Heinrich Apfelmus
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Simon Peyton Jones