Forget Scala! A Java Backend for Idris (Update)

07 May 2013

A lot has changed since my last post on the Java Backend for Idris.

Quick start

install the development version from git

$ git clone https://github.com/edwinb/Idris-dev
$ cd Idris-dev

enable the backend in config.mk

## Enable Java RTS:
CABALFLAGS :=-f Java

install Idris
```
$ make
```
Make sure you have maven installed and in your path

compile your own source with Java as target

$ idris someCode.idr -o someCode.java --target Java

run the generated Java source
```
$ ./someCode.jar
```

Behind the scenes

Setting CLASSPATH and invoking javac by hand is a tedious job which can be automated. To achive this Idris now uses maven. Since maven is not installed on all computers and many people just want to use the C backend, Java is disabled by default and has to be enabled by the cabal flag -f Java.

RTS

The runtime system for java targets is located in the subfolder /java of your source tree obtained via git. It will be compiled and installed for you by cabal which is invoked by make. Cabal itself will first adapt /java/pom_template.xml to include the correct version information and then invoke mvn install on the resulting pom.xml in order to install the runtime system in your local maven repository. The runtime system itself is a small .jar including base classes for idris objects (tagged by their constructor id), closures (aka runnables), tail call closures (recursive calls reduced to a loop) and a collection of primitive io functions (file access, message passing, ..), which mimic the interface of the C backend.

Compilation

Instead of just creating a .java file and relying on you to compile it by hand, idris will now create a maven project and compile + bundle the source for you. If you’d rather resort to the old behavior just pass -S during compilation - this way you only get a .java file (and you even can skip adding build flags to cabal). Another option is to pass -c, which will extract all compiled .class files and not bundle the project in a jar. Internally idris will setup a new maven project in the temp directory of your system. This project is described by a pom created from the template you find in /java/executable_pom_template.xml in the source tree. The template includes a dependency for your previously compiled runtime system and it will use (http://maven.apache.org/plugins/maven-shade-plugin/)shade in order to create a standalone executable .jar with all dependencies in it. The resulting .jar is automatically prefixed by a header including an .sh script to allow executing it directly.

Foreign functions

The new build process has improved foreign functions a lot. As always this is best illustrated by an example:

module Main

%include "com.google.common.math.IntMath"
%lib "com.google.guava:guava:14.0"

binom : Int -> Int -> IO Int
binom n k = mkForeign (FFun "IntMath.binomial" [FInt, FInt] FInt) n k

main : IO ()
main = do print "The number of possibilities in lotto is 49 choose 6:"
          res <- binom 49 6
          print res

The %include directive will add import com.google.common.math.IntMath to the generated java code. Further the %lib directive will advice maven to add a dependency on the google guava artifact. Coordinates are given by “groupId:artifactId:packaging:version” as usual. The rest of the code shows how to create a foreign function call to the static function binomial) from IntMath. Right now only calls to static functions are available, so you’d have to create wrappers for objects. I am however working on an improvement to remove the need for clumsy wrappers. When compiled with --target Java the above code will cause maven to automagically download guava and bundle it into the resulting .jar, so there is no need to manually download stuff or set any CLASSPATH variables.

Stay tuned for more updates, even tough it may take a while, because I have to finish my last exam (pattern recognition) and start my master’s thesis.

Compilation 3