[Haskell] Re: Newbie: what are the advantages of Haskell?

[Simon Marlow]

Rafael wrote:
>> Hi
>>
>> HTTP. We also need better availability of libraries, and a more
>> standard and reliable way to install them and specify their
>> dependencies. We could also do with a good debugger. These are being
>> addressed by the Google Summer of Code project.
> 
> Hi Neil, a good debugger ? What is in Google Summer of Code about it ?
> 
> I just found it:
> http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/summer-of-code/ticket/6
> that havent student related.
> 
> I was studing about debuging techs for haskell to build a nice
> debugging enviorment in HIDE or some other IDE. It's my bacharelor
> final work.

We're building some debugging features into GHCi.  This started with Pepe 
Iborra's Summer of Code project last year, and more recently Bernie Pope 
reworked the breakpoint support during his internship here at MSR Cambridge.  We 
are actively working on polishing what we have for inclusion in the next major 
GHC release.

The GHCi debugger is based on imperative debugging techniques: breakpoints, 
single stepping, etc.  It's a live debugger rather than post-mortem.  We 
focussed on accessibilty, rather than functionality: so the debugger is always 
on, and it works with everything that you can compile in GHCi.  It lacks some of 
the advanced debugging features you'll find in Hat, for example, but we hope it 
makes up for that by being more broadly accessible.

More information on the debugger is here:

   http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/NewGhciDebugger

although note that development is ongoing and more features have been added 
since the wiki was last updated.

All the debugging functionality is exposed by the GHC API, so it's certainly 
possible to build debugging support into an IDE based on GHC.

Cheers,
	Simon