Standalone byte code

[Manuel M. T. Chakravarty]

Maybe this idea has been discussed before, because I can't
imagine that it hasn't occured to anybody else before.

Would it be feasible to 

* allow emitting bytecode to disk and
* build the GHC RTS (including the byte code interpreter) as
  a standalone app?

Can't be that difficult, right? :-)

For purely byte code based executables, things like foreign
declarations that aren't supported by the byte code compiler
yet, are a problem, but I guess nothing of that is
fundamental. 

This would give us the ability to run Haskell programs on
any platform for which we can compile the RTS and might make
shipping of Haskell applications easier in some cases
(cf. the problems Alastair is facing with his system);
especially, because the RTS is only C code.

IIRC Ocaml supports something like this.

Cheers,
Manuel