Hi I am pleased to announce Data.Derive. Webpage: http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/~ndm/derive/ Hackage: http://hackage.haskell.org/cgi-bin/hackage-scripts/package/derive-0.1 Manual: http://www.cs.york.ac.uk/fp/darcs/derive/derive.htm
From the Manual:
"Data.Derive is a library and a tool for deriving instances for Haskell programs. It is designed to work with custom derivations, SYB and Template Haskell mechanisms. The tool requires GHC, but the generated code is portable to all compilers. We see this tool as a competitor to DrIFT." To take a very small example, imagine you define your data structure: data Foo = ... Now you can derive instances using derive with --derive=Eq,Data,Serial etc. You can also use deriving ({-! Typeable, Show !-}) and $( derive makeEq ''Foo ). Advantages over DrIFT: * No need for a preprocessor with GHC * Easy to add new derivations outside of the library * Can often automatically infer instances from examples (see the manual) * A different set of instance derivations Thanks Neil (Co-authored with Stefan O'Rear, thanks to many others for code contributions!)