WebAssembly back end merged into GHC

https://www.tweag.io/blog/2022-11-22-wasm-backend-merged-in-ghc/

by dfee • 4 years ago

123 12 4 years ago

siwatanejo• 4 years ago

GHC -> Haskell

rob74• 4 years ago

Yeah, that was the first question on my mind too: "WTF is GHC?". A quick Google search reveals that it's the Glasgow Haskell Compiler. Maybe it makes sense to expand that in the title?

redactyl• 4 years ago

Haskell is a language standard, and GHC is an implementation of that standard. It may be the only one (not sure the status of Hugs, another implementation), but that's the difference, I believe.

kajika91• 4 years ago

Thanks, same here, it rings a bell but I was unsure.

Laaas• 4 years ago

Is it just me or does it seem nonsensical that TH splices are compiled to WASM then executed with a WASM interpreter rather than just being interpreted natively by GHC like done with GHCi? Would also fix the weird situation with running git inside splices not working.

whateveracct3• 4 years ago

In general, you must run TH on the target platform for it to be correct. Otherwise, you may generate code that only works on your host (it isn't impossible for TH output to be platform-specific especially since it can do IO)

marcosdumay2• 4 years ago

Well, now the standard can change so it always runs as WASM, and completely fix the issue.

vmchale• 4 years ago

Yes it's quite an unfortunate situation.

Edward Z Yang has a canonical post on this: http://blog.ezyang.com/2016/07/what-template-haskell-gets-wr...

osener• 4 years ago

This is pretty cool. If I wanted to compile some old Haskell app, that was built with GHCJS, to WebAssembly should I use this unreleased branch of GHC or go for (seemingly) batteries included Asterius?

WebAssembly back end merged into GHC

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