Haskell Communities and Activities Report http://www.haskell.org/communities/ Tenth Edition – June 12, 2006 Andres Löh (ed.) Lloyd Allison Tiago Miguel Laureano Alves Krasimir Angelov Dmitry Astapov Alistair Bayley Jean-Philippe Bernardy Clifford Beshers Edwin Brady Björn Bringert Chris Brown Manuel Chakravarty Olaf Chitil Alain Crémieux Iavor Diatchki Atze Dijkstra Robert Dockins Frederik Eaton Shae Erisson Jan van Eijck Martin Erwig Sander Evers Markus Forsberg Simon Foster Benjamin Franksen Leif Frenzel André Furtado John Goerzen Dimitry Golubovsky Murray Gross Walter Gussmann Jurriaan Hage Thomas Hallgren Keith Hanna Robert van Herk Ralf Hinze Paul Hudak Liyang Hu Graham Hutton Johan Jeuring Paul Johnson Isaac Jones Oleg Kiselyov Marnix Klooster Lemmih Huiqing Li Andres Löh Rita Loogen Salvador Lucas Christoph Lüth Ketil Malde Christian Maeder Simon Marlow Paolo Martini Conor McBride Serge Mechveliani Neil Mitchell William Garret Mitchener Andy Adams-Moran J. Garrett Morris Rickard Nilsson Sven Panne Ross Paterson Jens Petersen Simon Peyton-Jones Bernie Pope Claus Reinke Frank Rosemeier David Roundy Alberto Ruiz David Sabel Tom Shackell Uwe Schmidt Martijn Schrage Alexandra Silva Axel Simon Anthony Sloane Dominic Steinitz Donald Bruce Stewart Martin Sulzmann Doaitse Swierstra Wouter Swierstra Audrey Tang Henning Thielemann Peter Thiemann Simon Thompson Phil Trinder Arjan van IJzendoorn Miguel Vilaca Joost Visser Malcolm Wallace Stefan Wehr Ashley Yakeley Bulat Ziganshin Preface This is the tenth edition of the Haskell Communities and Activities Report (HCAR) – a col- lection of entries about everything that is going on and related to Haskell in some way that appears twice a year. Perhaps the release of the tenth edition is a good time to have a look back at the beginning. At the Haskell Workshop 2001, during the traditional discussion on “The Future of Haskell”, Claus Reinke pointed out that it is very difficult to keep track of all the developments within the Haskell community: there are many people working on and with Haskell, they are located in very different places and are working on several different fields. He was asking for a collection of up-to-date information about releases of compilers, tools, and application, but also of ongoing work in a single place for everyone to look up. Everyone agreed with Claus, but probably nothing would have happened if he himself had not volunteered to start the project. Already in November 2001, the first edition of the HCAR appeared. It had 20 contributors and the PostScript/PDF version consisted of 22 pages. Four and a half years later, one can compare the current edition with the first and will notice that the basic structure has remained unchanged, but the size has nearly tripled (62 pages) and the number of contributors has almost reached a hundred (93 contributors). This demonstrates that the original concept was a good one, and that the HCAR is successful. I would therefore like to thank Claus for his work on the first five editions, Arthur van Leeuwen, the editor of the sixth edition, but most of all the countless contributors that have filled the report with content over the years. It is you that really make the report happen, and also a joy to work on, allowing me to read lots of interesting submissions while assembling the report. I am very happy to see that the HCAR has quite some “competition” these days: the Haskell Weekly News (→ 1.4) gather Haskell-relevant information on a regular basis, the mailing lists are as active as they always are, the #haskell IRC channel (→ 1.3) is a direct contact to other people interested in Haskell and a reliable source of information about current work, the Haskell Sequence (→ 1.4.1) is a news portal for the Haskell world, the Haskell Planet (unfortunately without an entry) collects blogs by Haskellers, the Haskell Wiki has been integrated with the main haskell.org (→ 1.1) site, and I am sure I forgot a few other ways to get at information about Haskell communities and activities. All the media mentioned above have different strengths and weaknesses, and therefore serve and reach different groups of people. It is good to see that there is so much communication in the Haskell world. If you miss a project in this HCAR, then simply contribute to the next – either by writing an entry yourself, or by making the project leader aware of the HCAR! Please mark the final weeks of October in your calendar, because that is when the entries for the November edition will be collected. As always, feedback is very welcome [email protected]. Now, I wish you pleasant reading! Andres Löh, University of Bonn, Germany 2 Contents 1 General 7 1.1 HaskellWiki and haskell.org ........................................ 7 1.2 haskell.org and Google Summer of Code 2006 .............................. 7 1.3 #haskell .................................................. 8 1.4 Haskell Weekly News ............................................ 8 1.4.1 The Haskell Sequence ........................................... 8 1.5 The Monad.Reader ............................................. 8 1.6 Books and tutorials ............................................ 8 1.6.1 “Hitchhickers Guide to Haskell” tutorial ................................. 8 1.6.2 New textbook – Programming in Haskell ................................. 9 1.6.3 Haskell Tutorial WikiBook ......................................... 9 2 Implementations 10 2.1 The Glasgow Haskell Compiler ...................................... 10 2.2 Hugs ..................................................... 11 2.3 nhc98 .................................................... 11 2.4 yhc ...................................................... 11 3 Language 12 3.1 Variations of Haskell ............................................ 12 3.1.1 Haskell on handheld devices ........................................ 12 3.1.2 Vital: Visual Interactive Programming .................................. 12 3.1.3 Pivotal: Visual Interactive Programming ................................. 12 3.1.4 House (formerly hOp) ........................................... 12 3.1.5 Camila .................................................... 13 3.1.6 HASP .................................................... 13 3.2 Non-sequential Programming ....................................... 13 3.2.1 Data Parallel Haskell ............................................ 13 3.2.2 GpH – Glasgow Parallel Haskell ...................................... 13 3.2.3 GdH – Glasgow Distributed Haskell ................................... 14 3.2.4 Eden ..................................................... 15 3.3 Type System/Program Analysis ...................................... 16 3.3.1 Epigram ................................................... 16 3.3.2 Chameleon project ............................................. 16 3.3.3 XHaskell project .............................................. 17 3.3.4 Constraint Based Type Inferencing at Utrecht .............................. 17 3.3.5 EHC, ‘Essential Haskell’ Compiler .................................... 18 3.4 Generic Programming ........................................... 18 4 Libraries 20 4.1 Packaging and Distribution ........................................ 20 4.1.1 Hackage and Cabal ............................................. 20 4.2 General libraries .............................................. 20 4.2.1 Hacanon-light ................................................ 20 4.2.2 HODE .................................................... 20 4.2.3 PFP – Probabilistic Functional Programming Library for Haskell ................... 20 4.2.4 Hmm: Haskell Metamath module ..................................... 21 4.2.5 GSLHaskell ................................................. 21 4.2.6 An Index Aware Linear Algebra Library ................................. 21 4.2.7 Ivor ..................................................... 22 4.2.8 magic-haskell ................................................ 22 4.2.9 MissingH .................................................. 22 3 4.2.10 MissingPy .................................................. 23 4.3 Parsing and transforming ......................................... 23 4.3.1 Utrecht Parsing Library and Attribute Grammar System ....................... 23 4.3.2 Strafunski .................................................. 23 4.4 System .................................................... 24 4.4.1 hs-plugins .................................................. 24 4.4.2 ldap-haskell ................................................. 24 4.4.3 Package “time” (formerly TimeLib) ................................... 24 4.4.4 The libpcap Binding ............................................ 24 4.4.5 Streams ................................................... 24 4.5 Databases and data storage ........................................ 25 4.5.1 CoddFish .................................................. 25 4.5.2 Takusen ................................................... 25 4.5.3 HaskellDB .................................................. 25 4.6 Data types and data structures ...................................... 26 4.6.1 Standard Collection Libraries (formerly Hierarchical Libraries Collections) .............. 26 4.6.2 The revamped monad transformer library ................................ 26 4.6.3 Data.ByteString (formerly FPS (fast packed strings)) ......................... 26 4.6.4 Edison .................................................... 26 4.6.5 Numeric prelude .............................................. 27 4.6.6 2-3 Finger Search Trees