Haskell Platform

Haskell platform
Developer(s)	Haskell Platform Infrastructure Team
Initial release	May 6, 2009; 15 years ago
Stable release	8.6.5 / May 9, 2019; 5 years ago
Repository	github.com/haskell/haskell-platform ;
Operating system	portable
License	BSD
Website	www.haskell.org/platform/

The Haskell Platform is a collection of software packages, tools and libraries that create a common platform for using and developing applications in Haskell. With the Haskell Platform, Haskell follows the same principle as Python: "Batteries included".^[3] Since 2022, the Haskell Platform has been deprecated.^[4]

Motivation

The quality of a programming language itself is only one component in the ability of application writers to get the job done. Programming languages can succeed or fail based on the breadth and quality of their library collection.^[3]

The Haskell Platform aims to unify Haskell development tools into a single package, consisting of a compiler, compiling tools and many standard libraries, therefore making it easier to develop and deploy full-featured Haskell-driven applications.

Packages included

Currently it consists of:^[5]

GHC, Haskell's flagship compiler
The GHC-Profiler
GHCi, GHCs bytecode-interpreter
The GHCi-Debugger^[6]
Alex, a lexer generator, similar to Lex
Happy, a parser generator, similar to Yacc^[7]
Cabal, a package manager
Haddock, a documentation tool
hsc2hs, a preprocessor for binding Haskell to C code, allowing C libraries to be used from Haskell
various libraries, such as zlib, cgi and OpenGL

Deployment

It is available for Ubuntu,^[8] Arch Linux,^[9]^[10] FreeBSD,^[11] Gentoo Linux (x86-64 and x86),^[12] Fedora,^[13] Debian (stable)^[14] and NixOS. One-click installers exist for OS X^[15] (only Intel) and Microsoft Windows.^[16]

Versions

Originally,^[when?] the Haskell Platform aimed at a 6-months release cycle.^[17] Starting with 7.10.2 which was released July 29, 2015, it has followed the release cycle of GHC and has since used the same version numbering scheme.^{[citation needed]}