Comparing libraries for generic programming in haskell

Abstract

Datatype-generic programming is defining functions that depend on the structure, or "shape", of datatypes. It has been around for more than 10 years, and a lot of progress has been made, in particular in the lazy functional programming language Haskell. There are more than 10 proposals for generic programming libraries or language extensions for Haskell. To compare and characterize the many generic programming libraries in a typed functional language, we introduce a set of criteria and develop a generic programming benchmark: a set of characteristic examples testing various facets of datatype-generic programming. We have implemented the benchmark for nine existing Haskell generic programming libraries and present the evaluation of the libraries. The comparison is useful for reaching a common standard for generic programming, but also for a programmer who has to choose a particular approach for datatype-generic programming.

Towards a categorical foundation for generic programming

“…There is a considerable body of work on datatype-generic programming (DGP), see [14,24] for recent overviews. PolyP [16], one of the first languages with support for DGP, grew out of the work on the Algebra of Programming [19,21].…”

Polytypic properties and proofs in Coq

“…, Scrap your Boilerplate (Lämmel and Jones 2003;Hinze and Löh 2007) and many others. A detailed comparison of these approaches is beyond the scope of this paper; and (Rodriguez et al 2008) are two survey papers that are good starting points. None of these approaches however are concerned with proofs over generic programs, and none of these approaches support the kind-indexed programs that typify the approach to polytypic programming we are working with.…”

“…Unfortunately, a consensus on the best approach has yet to be reached, and the number of approaches to generic programming almost equals the number of papers written on the topic. The subject area can be bewildering; survey papers by and Rodriguez et al (2008) try to disentangle some of the various strands of research.…”

Generic Programming with Multiple Parameters

“…Early approaches to generic programming in Haskell were separate extensions to the compiler or preprocessors [3], but recently all approaches are bundled as libraries [13], sometimes with direct compiler support [11]. The easier availability of generic programming functionality appears to increase its usage; in particular, offering native support for an approach in the compiler confers a sense of stability to a specific approach, allowing more programmers to use and benefit from generic programming.…”