Linspire/Freespire - Haskell for systems programming

The Linspire operating system is a Linux distribution targeted for the consumer marketplace (formerly known as LindowsOS.) Freespire is a variant suitable for developers and experienced Linux users that was announced in April, 2006. Since 2002, Linspire engineers have been using functional programming in select tasks such as:

hardware detection and configuration;
creation of installation CDs;
translation utilities for IRMA (International Resource Management Application);
many internal CGI/web applications.

Much of this work was done in O'Caml, but as of April, 2006, we have standardized on Haskell whenever appropriate. In both languages, the static typing is a huge help, saving many hours of frustration when deploying to a heterogeneous set of remote machines.

While O'Caml is an excellent language with a very good compiler, it has some attributes which have limited its use in our application:

the linker records the md5sums of libraries, which forces very tight dependencies between Debian packages;
difficult to do truly static linking;
the libraries are not as complete as those in Haskell, which means adding and maintaining libraries which should be more logically included in the distribution;
exceptions, while convenient, require great discipline to prevent them from popping up unexpectedly from libraries and terminating programs without any tracebacks.

These attributes could certainly be fixed, but there is a richness and simplicity to Haskell that has made that effort seem futile. Really, it is the positive aspects of Haskell that are driving the adoption. Examples include:

the hierarchical module system and import facilities make it easy to manage and use a large set of libraries;
Cabal makes supporting Linux packaging reasonably easy;
Haskell's partially static linking is easy to manage with Debian packaging (at the cost of some disk space);
Haskell can easily do true static linking when required;
the type system, and particularly type classes, make algorithm reuse a reality;
a vibrant community that is producing new advances weekly, both theoretical and practical, with a minimum of noise;
a programming style that promotes clean code, type signatures on functions, documentation, etc.;

Above all, Haskell programs tend to be beautiful, which makes it easy to pick up where you last left off working on them.

Developers at Linspire who use FP: Clifford Beshers, David Fox, Jeremy Shaw, Sean Meiners
Contact:
- Clifford Beshers
  Linspire, Inc.
  9333 Genesee Ave, 3rd Floor
  San Diego, California 92121
  USA
  Phone: +1 858-587-6700 ext 224
  Email: clifford.beshers@linspire.com
Number of users: > 10000
In use: since 2002
Languages used: Haskell, O'Caml
Compilers: Glasgow Haskell, O'Caml
Line count: > 50K.
Availability: Linspire OS is available from , with most packages available as source from the Linspire Click and Run Warehouse (see the specifications page of any package for source links.) Freespire is expected to launch in August, 2006 and all tools will be available in apt (Debian-style) repositories.