Micro Haskell

This directory contains an implementation of a small subset of Haskell. It uses combinators for the runtime execution.

The compiler can compile itself.

Compiling MicroHs

There are two different ways to compile MicroHs

• Using GHC with standard Prelude and libraries. Makefile target bin/gmhs
• Using the included combinator file and runtime. Makefile target bin/mhs

These different ways of compiling need slightly different imports etc. This happens by GHC looking in the ghc/ subdirectory first for any extras/overrides.

Compiling MicroHs is really best done using make, but there is also a MicroHs.cabal file for use with cabal. This only builds what corresponds to the first target.

Also note that there is no need to have a Haskell compiler to run MicroHs. All you need is a C compiler, and MicroHs can bootstrap, given the included combinator file.

To install mhs use make install. You also need to set the environment variable MHSDIR.

To compile on Windows make sure cl is in the path, and then use nmake with Makefile.windows.

Language

The language is an extended subset of Haskell-98.

Differences:

• Top level definitions must have a type signature.
• Type variables need an explicit forall.
• Type variables without a kind annotation are assumed to have kind Type.
• There is no prefix negation.
• There is no Read class.
• There is no deriving.
• There is no record syntax.
• The Prelude has to be imported explicitly.
• Polymorphic types are never inferred; use a type signature if you need it.
• A module must have an export list.
• Always enabled extension:
  • ConstraintKinds
  • EmptyDataDecls
  • ExistentialQuantification
  • ExtendedDefaultRules
  • FlexibleContexts
  • FlexibleInstance
  • ForeignFunctionInterface
  • FunctionalDependencies
  • IncoherentInstances
  • KindSignatures
  • MonoLocalBinds
  • MultiParamTypeClasses
  • NegativeLiterals
  • NoMonomorphismRestriction
  • OverlappingInstances
  • RankNTypes
  • QualifiedDo
  • ScopedTypeVariables
  • StarIsType
  • TupleSections
  • TypeSynonymInstances
  • UndecidableInstances
  • UndecidableSuperClasses
• main in the top module given to mhs serves at the program entry point.
• Many things that should be an error (but which are mostly harmless) are not reported.
• More differences that I don't remember right now.

Example

The file Example.hs contains the following:

module Example(main) where
import Prelude

fac :: Int -> Int
fac 0 = 1
fac n = n * fac(n-1)

main :: IO ()
main = do
  let
    rs = map fac [1,2,3,10]
  putStrLn "Some factorials"
  print rs

First, make sure the compiler is built by doing make. Then compile the file by bin/mhs Example -oEx which produces Ex. Finally, run the binary file by ./Ex. This should produce

Some factorials
[1,2,6,3628800]

Libraries

There are a number of libraries that have some of the standard Haskell functions. But in general, the Prelude contains less.

Types

There are some primitive data types, e.g Int, IO, Ptr, and Double. These are known by the runtime system and various primitive operations work on them. The function type, ->, is (of course) also built in.

All other types are defined with the language. They are converted to lambda terms using the Scott encoding. The runtime system knows how lists and booleans are encoded.

Compiler

The compiler is written in Micro Haskell. It takes a name of a module and compiles to a target (see below). This module should contain the function main of type IO () and it will be the entry point to the program.

Compiler flags

• -iDIR add DIR to search path for modules
• -oFILE output file. If the FILE ends in .comb it will produce a textual combinator file. If FILE ends in .c it will produce a C file with the combinators. For all other FILE it will compiler the combinators together with the runtime system to produce a regular executable.
• -r run directly (does not work if compiled with GHC)
• -v be more verbose, flag can be repeated
• -c use a compilation cache

With the -v flag the processing time for each module is reported. E.g.

importing done MicroHs.Exp, 284ms (91 + 193)

which means that processing the module MicroHs.Exp took 284ms, with parsing taking 91ms and typecheck&desugar taking 193ms.

With the -c flag the compiler writes out its internal cache of compiled modules to the file .mhscache at the end of compilation. And a startup it reads this file if it exists, and then validates the contents by an MD5 checksum for all the files in the cache. This can make compilation much faster since the compiler will not parse and typecheck a module if it is in the cache. Do NOT use -c when you are changing the compiler itself; if the cached data types change the compiler will probably just crash.

Environment variables

• MHSDIR the directory where lib/ and src/ are expected to be. Defaults to ./.
• MHSCC command use to compile C file to produce binaries. Look at the source for more information.

Compiler modules

• Compile, top level compiler. Maintains a cache of already compiled modules.
• Desugar, desugar full expressions to simple expressions.
• Exp, simple expression type, combinator abstraction and optimization.
• Expr, parsed expression type.
• Graph, strongly connected component algorithm.
• Ident, identifiers and related types.
• IdentMap, map from identifiers to something.
• Interactive, top level for the interactive REPL.
• Lex, lexical analysis and indentation processing.
• Main, the main module. Decodes flags, compiles, and writes result.
• MakeCArray, generate a C version of the combinator file.
• Parse, parse and build and abstract syntax tree.
• StateIO, state + IO monad.
• TCMonad, type checking monad.
• Translate, convert an expression tree to its value.
• TypeCheck, type checker.

Interactive mode

If no module name is given the compiler enters interactive mode. You can enter expressions to be evaluated, or top level definitions (including import). Simple line editing is available.

All definitions are saved in the file Interactive.hs and all input lines as saved in .mhsi. The latter file is read on startup so the command history is persisted.

Available commands:

• :quit Quit the interactive system
• :clear Get back to start state
• :del STR Delete all definitions that begin with STR
• :reload Reload all modules
• expr Evaluate expression.
• defn Add definition (can also be an import)

NOTE When you import a module it is cached. If the file changes and you import it again it will not reload. You can use :clear (or :reload) to get back to an empty cache. This is a bug.

Files

There is a number of subdirectories:

• Tools/ a few useful tools for compressions etc.
• bin/ executables are put here
• generated/ this contains the (machine generated) combinator file for the compiler.
• lib/ this contains the Prelude and other base library file.
• src/MicroHs/ the compiler source
• src/runtime/ the runtime source
• tests/ some tests

Runtime

The runtime system is written in C and is in src/runtime/eval.c. It uses combinators for handling variables, and has primitive operations for built in types and for executing IO operations. There is a also a simple mark-scan garbage collector. The runtime system is written in a reasonably portable C code.

Runtime flags

Runtime flags are given between the flags +RTS and -RTS. Between those the runtime decodes the flags, everything else is available to the running program.

• -HSIZE set heap size to SIZE cells, can be suffixed by k, M, or G, default is 50M
• -KSIZE set stack size to SIZE entries, can be suffixed by k, M, or G, default is100k
• -rFILE read combinators from FILE, instead of out.comb
• -v be more verbose, flag can be repeated

For example, bin/mhseval +RTS -H1M -v -RTS hello runs out.comb and the program gets the argument hello, whereas the runtime system sets the heap to 1M cells and is verbose.

FFI

MicroHs supports calling C functions, but all such functions must be in a table in the runtime system.

Features

The runtime system can serialize and deserialize any expression and keep its graph structure (sharing and cycles). The only exceptions to this are C pointers file handles, which cannot be serialized (except for stdin, stdout, and stderr).

Memory layout

Memory allocation is based on cells. Each cell has room for two pointers (i.e., two words, typically 16 bytes), so it can represent an application node. One bit is used to indicate if the cell is an application or something else. If it is something else one word is a tag indicating what it is, e.g., a combinator or an integer. The second word is then used to store any payload, e.g., the number itself for an integer node.

Memory allocation has a bitmap with one bit per cell. Allocating a cell consists of finding the next free cell using the bitmap, and then marking it as used. The garbage collector first clears the bitmap and then (recursively) marks every used cell in the bitmap. There is no explicit scan phase since that is baked into the allocation. Allocation is fast assuming the CPU has some kind of FindFirstSet instruction.

It is possible to use smaller cells by using 32 bit "pointers" instead of 64 bit pointers. This has a performance penalty, though.

Portability

The C code for the evaluator does not use any special features, and should be portable to many platforms. It has mostly been test with MacOS and Linux, and somewhat with Windows.

The code has only been tested on 64 bit platforms, so again, there are lurking problems with other word sizes, but they should be easy to fix.

The src/runtime/ directory contains configuration files for different platform. Edit src/runtime/eval.c to #include the right one.

Bootstrapping

The compiler can compile itself. To replace bin/mhs with a new version, do make bootstrap. This will recompile the compiler twice and compare the outputs to make sure the new compiler still works.

FAQ

• • Q: When will it get insert feature?
  • A: Maybe some time, maybe never.
• • Q: Why are the error messages so bad?
  • A: Error messages are boring.
• • Q: Why is the so much source code?
  • A: I wonder this myself. 7000+ lines of Haskell seems excessive. 2500+ lines of C is also more than I'd like for such a simple system.
• • Q: Why are the binaries so big?
  • A: The combinator file is rather verbose. The combinator file for the compiler shrinks from 350kB to 75kB when compressed with upx. The evaluator alone is about 70kB (26kB compressed with upx).