Announcement for the Compiler Tooling Task Force

Compiler Tooling Task Force announcement 8 january 2022

Link to full announcement: Compiler Tooling Task Force announcement 8 january 2022 - Google Docs

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I know many of us (myself including) think that parsing has historically received too much attention :slight_smile: , but you might be interested in @int-index, @knothed, and my ongoing attempts to refactor happy into libraries so it is a good foundation for all sorts of experiments.

At least I am hoping that demonstrating more recent Haskell development practice with a classic, “used in production” compiler will be a good example / case-study all around.

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Alex and happy are in dire need for some attention to stay on top.

Currently you have to pay for speed with UX.

Compared to megaparsec + parser-combinators + your own packages:

Pros:

  1. good performance of generated code
  2. somewhat formal specs

Cons:

  1. no modularity and reuse
  2. abysmal error reporting
  3. illegible generated code riddled with warnings
  4. language options are restricted by model or being too cumbersome
  5. entry barrier is higher

There are some heavyweight tools like BNFC, but they’re a whole universe upon themselves.

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We certainly are interested in all of those things. The current refactoring phase is to lay a proper foundation for addressing them.

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