llvm-12

[jfaure]

llvm-hs-9 is the latest version indexed on hackage, why are we so far behind?

[luc-tielen]

@jfaure probably because Haskell has a smaller community, and thus libraries like these can lag behind..

[juhp]

It would certainly be great to have new release(s) on Hackage :-)

[andrew-wja]

As @luc-tielen says, the number of people contributing to llvm-hs is tiny compared to the number of people contributing to LLVM, so we are naturally going to be slower at releasing new versions. LLVM has changed a lot since LLVM 9, and there's quite a bit to be done to bring bindings up to date.

The LLVM official Ocaml and C bindings don't actually expose all of the C++ API, and they are also part of the LLVM project, so there is more attention and effort being applied to keep them up to date. Our FFI layer directly provides bindings to things that the C API doesn't expose, in addition to wrapping the C API for other things, so we have a decently large maintenance burden when something changes.

We have a milestone tracking the things that need to be fixed so we can push llvm-hs-12.0.0 to hackage, so if anyone feels like having a stab at some of those issues, it would be very welcome!

[luc-tielen]

Also @andrew-wja, I've contacted the Haskell Foundation about potentially getting some funding for this library. I think LLVM is very important for Haskell because it's often used for compilers, so it makes sense (imo) to have proper support for these bindings.
Haven't heard back from them yet though.

[cwgoes]

If funding is the bottleneck here, we (Heliax) can also perhaps help. Who should I get in touch with?

[myShoggoth]

If funding is the bottleneck here, we (Heliax) can also perhaps help. Who should I get in touch with?

Me! Email me at andrew@haskell.foundation and we can discuss how to make this happen. Any other companies for whom this is important, please do the same. We can pool resources.