research-article

The HERMIT in the machine: a plugin for the interactive transformation of GHC core language programs

Authors:

Neil SculthorpeAuthors Info & Claims

Haskell '12: Proceedings of the 2012 Haskell Symposium

Pages 1 - 12

https://doi.org/10.1145/2364506.2364508

Published: 13 September 2012 Publication History

Abstract

The importance of reasoning about and refactoring programs is a central tenet of functional programming. Yet our compilers and development toolchains only provide rudimentary support for these tasks. This paper introduces a programmatic and compiler-centric interface that facilitates refactoring and equational reasoning. To develop our ideas, we have implemented HERMIT, a toolkit enabling informal but systematic transformation of Haskell programs from inside the Glasgow Haskell Compiler's optimization pipeline. With HERMIT, users can experiment with optimizations and equational reasoning, while the tedious heavy lifting of performing the actual transformations is done for them.

HERMIT provides a transformation API that can be used to build higher-level rewrite tools. One use-case is prototyping new optimizations as clients of this API before being committed to the GHC toolchain. We describe a HERMIT application - a read-eval-print shell for performing transformations using HERMIT. We also demonstrate using this shell to prototype an optimization on a specific example, and report our initial experiences and remaining challenges.

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Cited By

Mastorou LPapaspyrou NVazou NPolikarpova N(2022)Coinduction inductively: mechanizing coinductive proofs in Liquid HaskellProceedings of the 15th ACM SIGPLAN International Haskell Symposium10.1145/3546189.3549922(1-12)Online publication date: 6-Sep-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3546189.3549922
Handley MHutton G(2019)Improving HaskellTrends in Functional Programming10.1007/978-3-030-18506-0_6(114-135)Online publication date: 24-Apr-2019
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18506-0_6
Yallop J(2017)Staged generic programmingProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/31102731:ICFP(1-29)Online publication date: 29-Aug-2017
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Index Terms

The HERMIT in the machine: a plugin for the interactive transformation of GHC core language programs
1. Software and its engineering
  1. Software notations and tools
    1. General programming languages
      1. Language types
        Functional languages

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cover image ACM Conferences

Haskell '12: Proceedings of the 2012 Haskell Symposium

September 2012

168 pages

ISBN:9781450315746

DOI:10.1145/2364506

General Chair:
Janis Voigtländer
University of Bonn, Germany

ACM SIGPLAN Notices Volume 47, Issue 12
Haskell '12
December 2012
157 pages
ISSN:0362-1340
EISSN:1558-1160
DOI:10.1145/2430532
Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 2012 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 13 September 2012

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September 13, 2012

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Cited By

Mastorou LPapaspyrou NVazou NPolikarpova N(2022)Coinduction inductively: mechanizing coinductive proofs in Liquid HaskellProceedings of the 15th ACM SIGPLAN International Haskell Symposium10.1145/3546189.3549922(1-12)Online publication date: 6-Sep-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3546189.3549922
Handley MHutton G(2019)Improving HaskellTrends in Functional Programming10.1007/978-3-030-18506-0_6(114-135)Online publication date: 24-Apr-2019
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18506-0_6
Yallop J(2017)Staged generic programmingProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/31102731:ICFP(1-29)Online publication date: 29-Aug-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3110273
Elliott C(2017)Compiling to categoriesProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/31102711:ICFP(1-27)Online publication date: 29-Aug-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3110271
Kiselyov OBiboudis APalladinos NSmaragdakis Y(2017)Stream fusion, to completenessACM SIGPLAN Notices10.1145/3093333.300988052:1(285-299)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3093333.3009880
Kiselyov OBiboudis APalladinos NSmaragdakis YCastagna GGordon A(2017)Stream fusion, to completenessProceedings of the 44th ACM SIGPLAN Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages10.1145/3009837.3009880(285-299)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3009837.3009880
Farmer ASculthorpe NGill A(2015)Reasoning with the HERMIT: tool support for equational reasoning on GHC core programsACM SIGPLAN Notices10.1145/2887747.280430350:12(23-34)Online publication date: 30-Aug-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2887747.2804303
Bowman WMiller SSt-Amour VDybvig R(2015)Profile-guided meta-programmingACM SIGPLAN Notices10.1145/2813885.273799050:6(403-412)Online publication date: 3-Jun-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2813885.2737990
Farmer ASculthorpe NGill ALippmeier B(2015)Reasoning with the HERMIT: tool support for equational reasoning on GHC core programsProceedings of the 2015 ACM SIGPLAN Symposium on Haskell10.1145/2804302.2804303(23-34)Online publication date: 30-Aug-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2804302.2804303
Bowman WMiller SSt-Amour VDybvig RGrove DBlackburn S(2015)Profile-guided meta-programmingProceedings of the 36th ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation10.1145/2737924.2737990(403-412)Online publication date: 3-Jun-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2737924.2737990
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