July 2011 - Haskell - Haskell.org

ANNOUNCE: ioctl 0.0.1
by Maciej Piechotka 13 Sep '15

13 Sep '15

A package for type-safe I/O control. Currently only ioctl is supported. Currently simply a extract from my tuntap fork TODO: - Return the integer as well as structure (will break the API) - Port for Windows Network.Socket.IOCtl (as soon as I manage to setup some sane environment on this platform) - Wrapping around DeviceIoControl Example (in hsc): data NotRead = NotRead instance NotRead Int where ioctlReq _ = #const FIONREAD notRead s = ioctlsocket' s NotRead Regards

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Proposal to incorporate Haskell.org
by Don Stewart 16 Dec '11

16 Dec '11

Hello everyone. The haskell.org committee[1], in the interest of the long-term stability of the open source Haskell community infrastructure, has decided to incorporate haskell.org as a legal entity. This email outlines our recommendation, and seeks input from the community on this decision. The committee's proposal is that haskell.org incorporate as an entity under the Software Freedom Conservancy umbrella organization (the same group that Darcs joined recently): http://sfconservancy.org/ If we proceed with this move, haskell.org will be a legal entity, and registered as a non-profit, allowing us to more directly accept (US tax-deductible) donations, and to invest in assets that benefit the Haskell open source community. We welcome your feedback on the proposal attached below. -- Don Stewart (on behalf of the Haskell.org committee) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ = A proposal for the incorporation of Haskell.org = In recent years, haskell.org has started to receive assets, e.g. money from Google Summer Of Code, donations for Hackathons, and a Sparc machine for use in GHC development. We have also started spending this money: in particular, on hosting haskell.org itself. There is also interest in running fundraising drives for specific things such as Hackathon sponsorship and hosting fees. However, haskell.org doesn't currently exist as a legal entity, meaning that these assets have had to be held on our behalf by other entities, such as Galois and various universities. This leads to tricky situations, with no-one being sure who should decide how the haskell.org assets can be used. To solve these problems, we propose that haskell.org applies to become a member project of the Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) <http://conservancy.softwarefreedom.org/>. The SFC is a non-profit organization that provides free financial and administrative services to open source projects. Additionally, it has 501(c)(3) status, meaning donations from the US are tax-deductible. The SFC would hold haskell.org's money and other assets, and would be able to accept donations on behalf of haskell.org. The haskell.org committee, as described here [2], will make decisions on spending assets and other decisions related to governing the non-profit. Before proceeding, we are inviting input from the community in the form of specific objections or queries regarding the plan. We've tried to answer some of the most likely questions: Q: Does this mean that my Haskell project must now be covered by a copyleft licence such as GPL? A: No, but Haskell projects using haskell.org resource should use an Open Source licence <http://www.opensource.org/licenses/alphabetical>. Q: Will it still be possible to use community.h.o to host non-open-source material, such as academic papers? A: An overall minority of such content, as is the current situation, is not a problem. Q: Will it still be possible to have job ads on the haskell.org mailing lists and website? A: Yes. Q: Will this affect our ability to host the Haskell Symposium <http://www.haskell.org/haskell-symposium/> and Industrial Haskell Group<http://industry.haskell.org/> webpages within haskell.org? A: No. Q: What will be the relationship between haskell.org and other organizations such as the Haskell Symposium and Industrial Haskell Group? A: Those organisations will continue to exist as separate entities. Q: If an umbrella non-profit organisation "The Haskell Foundation" was created, would haskell.org be able to join it? A: Yes. It's likely that in such a scenario, the Haskell Foundation would become the owner of the haskell.org domain name, with the cost divided between the members. The entity that is part of the SFC would be renamed "community.haskell.org" in order to avoid confusion. [1]: http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Haskell.org_committee [2]: http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Haskell.org_committee#Operation

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Please take the State of Haskell, 2011 survey
by Johan Tibell 22 Aug '11

22 Aug '11

Hi all, I've put together a quick, 12-question State of Haskell, 2011 survey: http://blog.johantibell.com/2011/07/its-time-for-this-years-state-of.html The survey will hopefully give us some insight into how people use Haskell and perhaps also some ideas on how Haskell tools and libraries could be improved. This is the second year I run this survey. New from last year are specific questions on library support and reasoning about run-time performance. P.S. Please direct replies to this email to haskell-cafe(a)haskell.org. Cheers, Johan

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Eddie - a tool for shell scripting with haskell
by Mike Meyer 31 Jul '11

31 Jul '11

Eddie 0.2 is now available. The easy install is via cabal, but source is available from the project page on googlecode (http://eddie.googlecode.com) Eddie is a tool that runs Haskell functions of type String -> String as shell filters. Eddie was developed as an experiment in using functional languages for shell scripting. The reasons and results of that are discussed in my blog entry at http://blog.mired.org/2011/07/eddie-shell-scripting-with-haskell.html. Version 0.2 cleaned up error handling and added a flag to allow proper processing of binary files on Windows. Version 0.1 was released without a formal announcement. <mike -- Mike Meyer <mwm(a)mired.org> http://www.mired.org/ Independent Software developer/SCM consultant, email for more information. O< ascii ribbon campaign - stop html mail - www.asciiribbon.org

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Haskell Weekly News: Issue 192
by Daniel Santa Cruz 28 Jul '11

28 Jul '11

Welcome to issue 192 of the HWN, a newsletter covering developments in the Haskell community. This release covers the week of July 17 to 23, 2011. [1] http://goo.gl/8hDku You can find an HTML rendition of this issue at: http://contemplatecode.blogspot.com/2011/07/haskell-weekly-news-issue-192.h… Announcements Nicolas Wu announced the 4th edition of the Haskell Parallel Digest. The digest is made possible by the Parallel GHC Project. [2] http://goo.gl/lm5T1 Quotes of the Week * copumpkin: perhaps I should stop eating people I've never met * Saizan: agda is webscale in the sense that you need half of The Cloud to run the typechecker * kmc: my algorithm is O(1), but the constant factor grows quadratically as the problem size increases * cmccann: C++ is dual to Haskell in a sense: it's much too hard for the average programmer to use safely, but they do anyway with disastrous results; whereas Haskell isn't actually that difficult to use but people don't even try Top Reddit Stories * What Haskell Doesn't Have Domain: elaforge.blogspot.com, Score: 73, Comments: 58 On Reddit: [3] http://goo.gl/17UDu Original: [4] http://goo.gl/u4Ozy * Take the State of Haskell 2011 Survey Domain: blog.johantibell.com, Score: 55, Comments: 0 On Reddit: [5] http://goo.gl/Q7iip Original: [6] http://goo.gl/jq1Je * Economic Interpreter for Haskell Domain: pnyf.inf.elte.hu, Score: 40, Comments: 5 On Reddit: [7] http://goo.gl/BmBqf Original: [8] http://goo.gl/92mfS * Haskell on Heroku Domain: yesodweb.com, Score: 38, Comments: 5 On Reddit: [9] http://goo.gl/LYHZY Original: [10] http://goo.gl/Ly4n7 * Haskell Stickers! Domain: redbubble.com, Score: 33, Comments: 7 On Reddit: [11] http://goo.gl/WVXoH Original: [12] http://goo.gl/RpQ0f * Rewritten Agda introduction Domain: pnyf.inf.elte.hu, Score: 31, Comments: 34 On Reddit: [13] http://goo.gl/gz6TJ Original: [14] http://goo.gl/oTg5J * A plugin for GHC to turn Haskell into a strict language Domain: github.com, Score: 28, Comments: 18 On Reddit: [15] http://goo.gl/BK4os * What is the state of HackageDB 2.0? Domain: hackage.haskell.org, Score: 26, Comments: 8 On Reddit: [16] http://goo.gl/nrMTc Original: [17] http://goo.gl/tui2x * wxHaskell: The road to the Haskell Platform? Domain: sourceforge.net, Score: 26, Comments: 33 On Reddit: [18] http://goo.gl/vqfPC Original: [19] http://goo.gl/KNa16 * Just do It: Simple Monadic Equational Reasoning [pdf] Domain: cs.ox.ac.uk, Score: 24, Comments: 2 On Reddit: [20] http://goo.gl/GG0cs Original: [21] http://goo.gl/7MHGw * Cabal-dev 0.8 is out with improvements to: flag parsing, user cabal settings, cabal-dev ghci and more! Domain: github.com, Score: 24, Comments: 15 On Reddit: [22] http://goo.gl/YO6Q6 * Functors, applicative functors, monads – their relationship by example Domain: heh.fi, Score: 23, Comments: 0 On Reddit: [23] http://goo.gl/bkJ4Y Original: [24] http://goo.gl/bf6zo * Snap 0.5.2 released Domain: snapframework.com, Score: 23, Comments: 0 On Reddit: [25] http://goo.gl/0RCh3 Original: [26] http://goo.gl/jeFU5 Top StackOverflow Questions * Help in understanding pointfree code votes: 14, answers: 1 Read on SO: [27] http://goo.gl/Ryy5c * How can I combine Handles in Haskell? votes: 12, answers: 2 Read on SO: [28] http://goo.gl/25W4E * Current state of integrating unit tests with Haskell's Cabal? votes: 9, answers: 1 Read on SO: [29] http://goo.gl/nm8Zc * Does iteratee I/O make sense in non-functional languages? votes: 9, answers: 2 Read on SO: [30] http://goo.gl/f8YhP * Literate Haskell: References And Indexing votes: 8, answers: 1 Read on SO: [31] http://goo.gl/QYPBK * Call C Functions from Haskell at runtime votes: 7, answers: 1 Read on SO: [32] http://goo.gl/oj0R7 * Type-class instances for types with 2 parameters when the type-class has only one votes: 7, answers: 2 Read on SO: [33] http://goo.gl/JmxBr * List of options: equivalent of sequence in Scala? votes: 7, answers: 4 Read on SO: [34] http://goo.gl/MnZg8 * Is it necessary to specify every superclass in a class context of a class declaration? votes: 7, answers: 1 Read on SO: [35] http://goo.gl/OxoSN * Partial decoding of ByteStrings to Text votes: 7, answers: 1 Read on SO: [36] http://goo.gl/9JSKw * Haskell, algorithms and school votes: 7, answers: 1 Read on SO: [37] http://goo.gl/bsM5v About the Haskell Weekly News To help create new editions of this newsletter, please send stories to dstcruz(a)gmail.com. Until next time, Daniel Santa Cruz References 1. http://haskell.org/ 2. http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.parallel/14 3. http://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/iuhc0/what_haskell_doesnt_have/ 4. http://elaforge.blogspot.com/2011/07/what-haskell-doesnt-have.html 5. http://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/irxtf/take_the_state_of_haskell_20… 6. http://blog.johantibell.com/2011/07/its-time-for-this-years-state-of.html 7. http://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/iuswk/economic_interpreter_for_has… 8. http://pnyf.inf.elte.hu/fp/Economic_en.xml?yes 9. http://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/iuoun/haskell_on_heroku/ 10. http://www.yesodweb.com/blog/2011/07/haskell-on-heroku 11. http://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/iwm3r/haskell_stickers/ 12. http://www.redbubble.com/products/configure/6390818-sticker 13. http://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/itkii/rewritten_agda_introduction/ 14. http://pnyf.inf.elte.hu/fp/Overview_en.xml?fuckyoureddit#agda 15. http://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/iur1n/a_plugin_for_ghc_to_turn_has… 16. http://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/isqmc/what_is_the_state_of_hackage… 17. http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/hackage/wiki/HackageDB/2.0 18. http://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/itwl5/wxhaskell_the_road_to_the_ha… 19. http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?thread_name=alpine.DEB.2.00.11… 20. http://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/it13r/just_do_it_simple_monadic_eq… 21. http://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/jeremy.gibbons/publications/mr.pdf 22. http://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/it50b/cabaldev_08_is_out_with_impr… 23. http://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/it3lh/functors_applicative_functor… 24. http://heh.fi/haskell/functors/ 25. http://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/iv6g3/snap_052_released/ 26. http://snapframework.com/blog/2011/07/20/snap-0.5.2-released 27. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6797247/help-in-understanding-pointfree-… 28. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6736790/how-can-i-combine-handles-in-has… 29. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6787231/current-state-of-integrating-uni… 30. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6795384/does-iteratee-i-o-make-sense-in-… 31. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6736482/literate-haskell-references-and-… 32. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6740850/call-c-functions-from-haskell-at… 33. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6747083/type-class-instances-for-types-w… 34. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6750609/list-of-options-equivalent-of-se… 35. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6782389/is-it-necessary-to-specify-every… 36. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6786328/partial-decoding-of-bytestrings-… 37. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6797216/haskell-algorithms-and-school

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ICFP 2011: Call for participation
by Wouter Swierstra 26 Jul '11

26 Jul '11

===================================================================== Call for Participation The 16th ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Functional Programming (ICFP 2011) http://www.icfpconference.org/icfp2011/ Tokyo, Japan September 19-21, 2011 ===================================================================== ICFP provides a forum for researchers and developers to hear about the latest work on the design, implementations, principles, and uses of functional programming. The conference covers the entire spectrum of work, from practice to theory, including its peripheries. * Program: http://www.icfpconference.org/icfp2011/program.html * Registration link: https://regmaster3.com/2011conf/ICFP11/register.php * Local arrangements (including travel and accommodation): http://www.biglab.org/icfp11local/index.html Schedule including related events: September 18 Workshop on Generic Programming (WGP) Workshop on High-Level Parallel Programming and Applications (HLPP) Workshop on ML September 19-21 ICFP September 22 Commercial Users of Functional Programming – Day 1 (CUFP Tutorials) Haskell Symposium September 23 Commercial Users of Functional Programming – Day 2 (CUFP Tutorials) Erlang Workshop Haskell Implementors' Workshop September 24 Commercial Users of Functional Programming – Day 3 (CUFP Talks) Continuation Workshop Conference organizers: * General Co-Chairs: Manuel Chakravarty, University of New South Wales Zhenjiang Hu, National Institute of Informatics * Program Chair: Olivier Danvy, Aarhus University * Local Arrangements Chair: Soichiro Hidaka, National Institute of Informatics * Workshop Co-Chairs: Gabriele Keller, University of New South Wales Derek Dreyer, MPI-SWS * Programming Contest Chair: Eijiro Sumii, Tohoku University * Publicity Chair: Wouter Swierstra, Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen =====================================================================

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Announce: Yi 0.6.4.0
by Jeff Wheeler 24 Jul '11

24 Jul '11

Hi all, I'd like to announce a new release of Yi, a text editor written in and extensible in Haskell. ## What's new? * Minimal Java syntax lexer * Many, many Pango improvements (both speed and behavioral!) * Creating files by simply editing files that don't yet exist now works correctly * Yi now supports keymaps with the hyper key * Yi now has some support for more complicated window layouts ## What's Yi? Yi is a text editor written in Haskell and extensible in Haskell. The long-term goal of the Yi project is to provide the editor of choice for Haskell programmers. Yi now works relatively well in the terminal, using the vty package, and also has Gtk frontends using vte (which interfaces with the terminal interface) and a Pango frontend. There is also a Cocoa frontend under (slow) development. ## Installation Using cabal install: $ cabal update $ cabal install yi The default UI depends on the vty package, which will only compile with the ncurses development headers available. On Ubuntu, you need to install the `libncurses5-dev` package. On Windows, you'll need to disable the default vty terminal UI, and use a Gtk UI instead (the vte UI requires vty, so you can't install that either): $ cabal install yi -f-vty -fpango (Windows support is not well-tested, though.) Optionally also install the contrib package: $ cabal install yi-contrib ## Features * A purely functional editor core * Key-bindings written as parsers of the input * Emacs, Vim and (partial) Cua emulations provided by default * Console front-end (Gtk2Hs and Cocoa front-ends in development) * Static configuration (XMonad style) for fast load * Haskell support: * Lexical highlighting and (unicode-based) beautification. * Layout-aware parenthesis-matching * Auto-indentation * cabal-build within the editor * Syntax highlighting for a number of other languages (latex, python, perl, ...) ## More Info Read the README [1] on GitHub for more information. The source code [2] is also hosted there. ## Credits This release is brought to you by: * Andrew Myers * Andy Gocke * arenl * Corey O'Connor * Jeff Wheeler * Jeremy Wall * Reiner Pope * Robin Green and all the contributors to the previous versions. Also, Yi would not exist without all the work put into the Haskell platform. [1] https://github.com/yi-editor/yi/blob/master/README.md [2] https://github.com/yi-editor/yi -- Jeff Wheeler Undergraduate, Electrical Engineering University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

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ANN: shelltestrunner 1.0
by Simon Michael 24 Jul '11

24 Jul '11

I'm pleased to announce the 1.0 release of shelltestrunner! Home page: http://joyful.com/repos/shelltestrunner Install: $ cabal install shelltestrunner shelltestrunner tests command-line programs or arbitrary shell commands. It reads simple declarative tests specifying a command, some input, and the expected output, error output and exit status. Tests can be run selectively, in parallel, with a timeout, in color, and/or with differences highlighted. Projects using it include hledger, yesod, and berp. shelltestrunner is free software released under GPLv3+. I started shelltestrunner two years ago, inspired by John Wiegley's ledger tests. John Macfarlane, Bernie Pope and Trygve Laugst?l have contributed code. The hackage page shows the libraries it relies on - most notably, Max Bolingbroke's test-framework. The site uses hakyll, pandoc & hamlet. New in 1.0: * New home page/docs * The `>>>=` field is now required; you may need to add it to your existing tests * Input and expected output can now contain lines beginning with `#` * Multiple tests in a file may now have whitespace between them * The `-i/--implicit` option has been dropped * New `-d/--diff` option shows test failures as a unified diff when possible, including line numbers to help locate the problem * New `-x/--exclude` option skips certain test files (eg platform-specific ones) * Passing arguments through to test-framework is now more robust * Fixed: parsing could fail when input contained left angle brackets * Fixed: some test files generated an extra blank test at the end

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Lectureship at St Andrews, closing date 27/7/11
by Kevin Hammond 23 Jul '11

23 Jul '11

Lecturer in Computer Science - SK8461 Salary: £36,862 - £45,336 per annum Start: September 2011 or as soon as possible thereafter Details The Scottish Informatics and Computer Science Alliance (SICSA) is creating a world-leading Computer Science research community across the universities in Scotland. As part of this initiative, we seek lectureship applications from researchers with expertise in the SICSA themes of Next Generation Internet; Complex Systems Engineering; Multi-modal Interaction and Modelling & Abstraction. We are particularly interested in candidates with expertise in sensor systems, multicore systems, embedded systems, data intensive systems or wireless communications and especially those who bridge two or more of these areas. Full details and application forms at: https://www.vacancies.st-andrews.ac.uk/ViewVacancy.aspx?enc=mEgrBL4XQK0+ld8… Best Wishes, Kevin -------- Kevin Hammond, Professor of Computer Science, University of St Andrews T: +44-1334 463241 F: +44-1334-463278 W: http://www.cs.st-andrews.ac.uk/~kh In accordance with University policy on electronic mail, this email reflects the opinions of the individual concerned, may contain confidential or copyright information that should not be copied or distributed without permission, may be of a private or personal nature unless explicitly indicated otherwise, and should not under any circumstances be taken as an official statement of University policy or procedure (see http://www.st-and.ac.uk) The University of St Andrews is a charity registered in Scotland : No SC013532

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ANNOUNCE: dbus-core 0.9
by John Millikin 23 Jul '11

23 Jul '11

================================================ D-Bus implementation for Haskell (dbus-core_0.9) ================================================ This is the first significant release to dbus-core in a while, and it contains some significant improvements to both the API and implementation. Users are advised to upgrade, as the 0.8 branch will no longer be receiving improvements or corrections. * Release announcement: https://john-millikin.com/releases/dbus-core/0.9/ * API documentation: http://hackage.haskell.org/package/dbus-core * Source code (literate PDF): https://john-millikin.com/downloads/dbus-core_0.9.pdf * Source code (tarball): https://john-millikin.com/downloads/dbus-core_0.9.tar.gz Changes in release 0.9 ====================== The biggest change in this release is that dbus-client has been merged into dbus-core. The original purpose of dbus-client (as a very high-level, often-updated support library) never materialized, and the split packaging caused issues with dependencies and versioning. The parts of dbus-client that were commonly used were moved into the DBus.Client and DBus.Client.Simple modules. Users are highly encouraged to use these modules in their applications. Other changes and improvements include: * The Array, Dictionary, and Structure types are no longer needed for most users. You can cast containers directly to corresponding standard types, such as Vector and Map. * Smart constructors for magic strings have been renamed so they're easier to read and type; for example, mkBusName is now just busName. * Support for custom transports and authentication mechanisms. * Removed some seldom-used modules, such as MatchRule and NameReservation. Their functionality has been merged into the new client modules. * Performance improvements for marshaling and unmarshaling messages. How to use the new simple client API ==================================== The new API makes calling and exporting methods very easy; take a look at these examples! Getting a list of connected clients ----------------------------------- {-# LANGUAGE OverloadedStrings #-} module Main (main) where import Data.List (sort) import DBus.Client.Simple main :: IO () main = do client <- connectSession -- Request a list of connected clients from the bus bus <- proxy client "org.freedesktop.DBus" "/org/freedesktop/DBus" reply <- call bus "org.freedesktop.DBus" "ListNames" [] -- org.freedesktop.DBus.ListNames returns a single value, which is -- a list of names. let Just names = fromVariant (reply !! 0) -- Print each name on a line, sorted so reserved names are below -- temporary names. mapM_ putStrLn (sort names) Exporting methods ----------------- {-# LANGUAGE OverloadedStrings #-} module Main (main) where import Control.Concurrent (threadDelay) import Control.Monad (forever) import DBus.Client.Simple onEcho :: String -> IO String onEcho str = do putStrLn str return str onDivide :: Double -> Double -> IO Double onDivide x y = if y == 0 then throwError "com.example.DivisionByZero" "Divided by zero" [] else return (x / y) main :: IO () main = do client <- connectSession -- Request a unique name on the bus. If the name is already -- in use, continue without it. requestName client "com.example.ExportExample" [] -- Export an example object at "/divide" export client "/divide" [ method "com.example.Echo" "Echo" onEcho , method "com.example.Math" "Divide" onDivide ] -- Wait forever for method calls forever (threadDelay 50000)

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