The GHC reading list

Suppose you want to start contributing to GHC: what should you read by way of background? Here is an annotated list. Please add to it as you come across useful material.

You can ask questions on ghc-devs@haskell.org. People are friendly. See also working on GHC and GHC contributors.

General background

• The GHC Commentary is a Wiki that describes GHC's implementation. It is a Wiki. That means that you can, and should, fix errors and write new chapters.

•  The Glasgow Haskell Compiler, in  The Architecture of Open Source Applications, Volume II, ed Brown & Wilson. This paper gives an up to date (2012) technical overview of GHC.

• Simon PJ's  home page and  publications page have lots of relevant papers. Some key ones appear below but not all.

• Simon PJ's books:
  •  The Implementation of Functional Programming Languages
  •  Implementing Functional Languages: a tutorial give useful general background. They are not GHC-specific at all, but they have lots of information about functional-language compilers.

Types and type inference

•  Modular type inference with local assumptions, Simon Peyton Jones, Dimitrios Vytiniotis, Tom Schrijvers, Martin Suzmann, Journal of Functional Programming, 2011. This epic 83-page JFP paper brings together, in a single uniform framework, a series of our earlier papers on type inference for type systems involving local constraints, including GADTs and indexed type families.

•  Papers about type equalities in GHC's intermediate language
  • Equality proofs and deferred type errors, Simon Peyton Jones, Dimitrios Vytiniotis and Pedro Magalhaes (ICFP 2012). An exploration of what happens when you take equality proofs seriously in a compiler.
  • Giving Haskell a promotion, Brent Yorgey, Stepanie Weirich, Julien Cretin, Simon Peyton Jones, and Dimitrios Vytiniotis (TLDI 2012). How to (a) add kind polymorphism and (b) promote data types to become data kinds.
  • System F with Type Equality Coercions, Martin Sulzmann, Manuel Chakravarty, and Simon Peyton Jones (TLDI 2007). The first paper about System FC.

•  Unboxed values as first class citizens, SL Peyton Jones and J Launchbury, Functional Programming Languages and Computer Architecture (FPCA'91), Boston, LNCS 523, Springer Verlag, Sept 1991, pp636-666. How unboxed data types work in GHC.

Please add: System FC, GADTs, kind polymorphism etc

Optimisations

•  A transformation-based optimiser for Haskell, SL Peyton Jones and A Santos, Science of Computer Programming 32(1-3), pp3-47, September 1998. Gives an overview of many of the transformations GHC does on Core. Andre's  PhD thesis gives more details.

•  Secrets of the GHC inliner, Simon Peyton Jones and Simon Marlow, Journal of Functional Programming 12(4), July 2002, pp393-434. Describes how the Simplifier does inlining.

•  A short cut to deforestation, A Gill, SL Peyton Jones, J Launchbury, Proc Functional Programming Languages and Computer Architecture (FPCA'93), Copenhagen, June 1993, pp223-232. The famous foldr/build rule. Andy's  PhD thesis has more.

•  Playing by the rules: rewriting as a practical optimisation technique in GHC, Simon Peyton Jones, Andrew Tolmach and Tony Hoare, Haskell Workshop 2001. Describes how RULES work, which are heavily used in GHC.

Back end issues

•  How to make a fast curry: push/enter vs eval/apply, Simon Marlow and Simon Peyton Jones, International Conference on Functional Programming, Snowbird, Sept 2004, pp4-15.

•  Implementing lazy functional languages on stock hardware: the Spineless Tagless G-machine, SL Peyton Jones, Journal of Functional Programming 2(2), Apr 1992, pp127-202. The original STG paper but still highly relevant.

Please add: Hoopl, C--.

Data Parallel Haskell

•  Data Parallel Haskell: a status report, Manuel M. T. Chakravarty, Roman Leshchinskiy, Simon Peyton Jones, Gabriele Keller, and Simon Marlow. , DAMP 2007: Workshop on Declarative Aspects of Multicore Programming, 2007

•  Harnessing the Multicores: Nested Data Parallelism in Haskell, Simon Peyton Jones, Roman Leshchinskiy, Gabriele Keller, and Manuel M. T. Chakravarty , IARCS Annual Conference on Foundations of Software Technology and Theoretical Computer Science (FSTTCS 2008), IBFI, Schloss Dagstuhl, 2008.

•  Vectorisation Avoidance, Gabriele Keller, Manuel M. T. Chakravarty, Roman Leshchinskiy, Ben Lippmeier, and Simon Peyton Jones, Proceedings of ACM SIGPLAN Haskell Symposium 2012, ACM Press, 2012.

•  Work Efficient Higher-Order Vectorisation, Ben Lippmeier, Manuel M. T. Chakravarty, Gabriele Keller, Roman Leshchinskiy, and Simon Peyton Jones, The 17th ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Functional Programming, ACM Press, 2012