[Nix-dev] Typing nix − funding campaign

[Théophane Hufschmitt]

Thu 12 Jan 17 − 15:31, Peter Simons(simons at nospf.cryp.to) a écrit:
> Hi Théophane,
> 
>  > https://www.gofundme.com/typing-nix
> 
> I see that you plan to spend approx. 2 months (a third of the entire
> project's time) on developing a parser for Nix. Why do you feel that
> this is necessary, considering that there is a parser for Nix already?
> 
> The notion of working with a separate implementation worries me because
> I see the danger that your efforts are going to exist in a parallel
> universe which won't be possible to merge back into Nix proper.
> 
> Or, to put it differently, does your project even have the goal of
> providing a working implementation for Nix? Or is it more about
> exploring the design space for type systems that Nix could potentially
> use?
> 
> Best regards,
> Peter

Hi Peter,

The two months are not just for formalizing the syntax and writing the
parser, but also (and mostly) for bibliography.

I agree with your concerns about the separate implementation.
The reason for this is related to your third paragraph. The inference
algorithm that is going to be used is no trivial at all to implement,
and my advisor already has done a lot of work on this that could be
reused, but written in OCaml, and we agreed that writing and
maintaining a parser it was far easier than reimplementing what he
already had done, and that it would be too hard to ship a usable
product in a few month without using it.

Regarding the goal of the project, it will be focused on providing a
working implementation for nix (although that will of course first
require exploring the possibilities for a type system for nix). There
is enough theorical work to come up with something usable (and useful)
for a langaige such as nix.

-- 
Théophane Hufschmitt
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