Haskell Communities and Activities Report http://www.haskell.org/communities/ Eighth Edition – May 13, 2005 Andres L¨oh (ed.) Perry Alexander Lloyd Allison Tiago Miguel Laureano Alves Krasimir Angelov Alistair Bayley J´er´emy Bobbio Bj¨orn Bringert Niklas Broberg Paul Callaghan Mark Carroll Manuel Chakravarty Olaf Chitil Koen Claessen Catarina Coquand Duncan Coutts Philippa Cowderoy Alain Cr´emieux Iavor Diatchki Atze Dijkstra Shae Erisson Sander Evers Markus Forsberg Simon Foster Leif Frenzel Andr´eFurtado John Goerzen Murray Gross Walter Gussmann Jurriaan Hage Sven Moritz Hallberg Thomas Hallgren Keith Hanna Bastiaan Heeren Anders H¨ockersten John Hughes Graham Hutton Patrik Jansson Johan Jeuring Paul Johnson Isaac Jones Oleg Kiselyov Graham Klyne Daan Leijen Huiqing Li Andres L¨oh Rita Loogen Salvador Lucas Christoph Luth¨ Ketil Z. Malde Christian Maeder Simon Marlow Conor McBride John Meacham Serge Mechveliani Neil Mitchell William Garret Mitchener Andy Moran Matthew Naylor Rickard Nilsson Jan Henry Nystr¨om Sven Panne Ross Paterson Jens Petersen John Peterson Simon Peyton-Jones Jorge Sousa Pinto Bernie Pope Claus Reinke Frank Rosemeier David Roundy George Russell Chris Ryder David Sabel Uwe Schmidt Martijn Schrage Peter Simons Anthony Sloane Dominic Steinitz Donald Bruce Stewart Martin Sulzmann Autrijus Tang Henning Thielemann Peter Thiemann Simon Thompson Phil Trinder Arjan van IJzendoorn Tuomo Valkonen Eelco Visser Joost Visser Malcolm Wallace Ashley Yakeley Jory van Zessen Bulat Ziganshin Preface You are reading the 8th edition of the Haskell Communities and Activities Report (HCAR). These are interesting times to be a Haskell enthusiast. Everyone seems to be talking about darcs (→ 6.3) and Pugs (→ 6.1) these days, and it is nice to see Haskell being mentioned in places where it usually was not. But here is what I think this new success really means: All the people who have spent their time experimenting with Haskell, writing tools or improving libraries, have done their job right! They have successfully lowered the barrier for newcomers. So thanks to all the contributors for their time and effort. All the entries, old and new, show that a lot is going on in the Haskell community, and that it is a lively and friendly place to be. The Haskell Cabal (→ 4.1.1), which is now finding its way into all the major Haskell implementations, will hopefully make the contribution of Haskell libraries and tools even easier from now on. A special thank-you also goes to all the people who help spreading the Haskell word in new ways: the Monad.Reader (→ 1.5) is a new Haskell on-line magazine that already produced some very informative and well-written articles, the Haskell Sequence (→ 1.4) is a new site for news and discussion. I also want to mention Walter Gussmann’s entry here (→ 7.2.2), who has a success story to tell about teaching functional programming to children in high school. Because the HCAR is quickly increasing in size, I have removed a couple of entries from authors that have not reported back. If the projects are still active, I will be more than happy to include them again in the next edition. I kept the typographical hints indicating change: completely new entries have a blue (or gray, if viewed without color) background; entries with a certain amount of change have a header with a blue background. I have also slightly adapted the structure of the report. Feedback is, as always, welcome [email protected]. Please remember that the next report will appear in November 2005, so already mark the last weeks of October, because the new entries will be due by then. Editing the report has been an enjoyable experience, and I sincerely hope that you will enjoy reading it even more. Andres L¨oh, University of Utrecht, The Netherlands 2 Contents 1 General 7 1.1 haskell.org .................................................. 7 1.2 #haskell .................................................. 7 1.3 The Haskell HaWiki ............................................ 7 1.4 The Haskell Sequence ........................................... 7 1.5 The Monad.Reader ............................................. 8 1.6 Books and tutorials ............................................ 8 1.6.1 New textbook – Programming in Haskell ................................. 8 1.6.2 Haskell Tutorial WikiBook ......................................... 8 1.6.3 hs-manpage-howto(7hs) .......................................... 8 1.7 Haskell related events ........................................... 8 1.7.1 Future events ................................................ 8 2 Implementations 10 2.1 The Glasgow Haskell Compiler ...................................... 10 2.2 Hugs ..................................................... 11 2.3 nhc98 .................................................... 11 2.4 jhc ...................................................... 11 2.5 Haskell to Clean Translation ....................................... 12 2.6 Helium .................................................... 12 3 Language 14 3.1 Variations of Haskell ............................................ 14 3.1.1 Haskell on handheld devices ........................................ 14 3.1.2 Vital: Visual Interactive Programming .................................. 14 3.1.3 hOp ..................................................... 14 3.1.4 Camila .................................................... 15 3.1.5 Haskell Server Pages (HSP) ........................................ 15 3.1.6 Haskell Regular Patterns (HaRP) ..................................... 15 3.2 Foreign Function Interface ......................................... 16 3.3 Non-sequential Programming ....................................... 16 3.3.1 GpH – Glasgow Parallel Haskell ...................................... 16 3.3.2 GdH – Glasgow Distributed Haskell & Mobile Haskell ......................... 16 3.3.3 Eden ..................................................... 17 3.3.4 HCPN – Haskell-Coloured Petri Nets ................................... 17 3.4 Type System/Program Analysis ...................................... 18 3.4.1 Agda: An Interactive Proof Editor .................................... 18 3.4.2 Epigram ................................................... 18 3.4.3 Chameleon ................................................. 19 3.4.4 Constraint Based Type Inferencing at Utrecht .............................. 20 3.4.5 EHC, ‘Essential Haskell’ Compiler .................................... 21 3.5 Generic Programming ........................................... 22 4 Libraries 24 4.1 Packaging and Distribution ........................................ 24 4.1.1 Hackage and Cabal ............................................. 24 4.1.2 Eternal Compatibility in Theory – a module versioning protocol ................... 24 4.1.3 LicensedPreludeExts ............................................ 25 4.2 General libraries .............................................. 25 4.2.1 Process ................................................... 25 4.2.2 System.Console.Cmdline.Pesco – a command line parser 6= GNU getopt ............... 25 3 4.2.3 TimeLib ................................................... 26 4.2.4 A redesigned IO library .......................................... 26 4.2.5 The Haskell Cryptographic Library .................................... 26 4.2.6 Numeric prelude .............................................. 27 4.2.7 Haskore revision .............................................. 27 4.2.8 The revamped monad transformer library ................................ 27 4.2.9 HBase .................................................... 28 4.2.10 Pointless Haskell .............................................. 28 4.2.11 hs-plugins .................................................. 28 4.2.12 MissingH .................................................. 28 4.2.13 MissingPy .................................................. 29 4.3 Parsing and transforming ......................................... 29 4.3.1 Parsec .................................................... 29 4.3.2 Haskell-Source with eXtensions (HSX, haskell-src-exts) ......................... 29 4.3.3 Strafunski .................................................. 29 4.3.4 Medina – Metrics for Haskell ....................................... 30 4.4 Data handling ............................................... 30 4.4.1 DData .................................................... 30 4.4.2 A library for strongly typed heterogeneous collections ......................... 30 4.4.3 HSQL .................................................... 31 4.4.4 Takusen ................................................... 31 4.4.5 HaskellDB .................................................. 31 4.4.6 ByteStream ................................................. 31 4.4.7 Compression-2005 ............................................. 32 4.5 User interfaces ............................................... 32 4.5.1 wxHaskell .................................................. 32 4.5.2 FunctionalForms .............................................. 32 4.5.3 Gtk2Hs – A GUI library for Haskell based on Gtk+ .......................... 33 4.5.4 HToolkit ................................................... 33 4.5.5 HTk ..................................................... 33 4.5.6 Fudgets ................................................... 34 4.6 Graphics ................................................... 34 4.6.1 HOpenGL – A Haskell Binding for OpenGL and GLUT ........................ 34 4.6.2 FunWorlds – Functional Programming