Roadmap for the future of ATS

Google Group
1

FYI.

There is some discussion on the future of ATS at:

https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/ats-lang-users/yg50Xr6ECAc

I briefly outline a few things that we are doing right now:

  1. Exporting ATS-constraints generated during typechecking in JSON format.
    Eventually, I expect that the constraint-solving component can be moved
    out of ATS if one desires. This should also open the possibility for
    staloading pre-typechecked library code without re-typechecking.

  2. Exporting ATS syntax trees (at various levels) in JSON format so that
    tools for analyzing ATS code can be written externally (using ATS or
    languages like Java). Right now, level-2 ATS syntax trees can already
    be partially exported.

    People interested in ATS can take advantage of this feature
    by implementing tools for ATS (for instance, implementing some form of
    type inference for a subset of ATS; implementing a compiler for
    translating ATS code into Javascript; etc.)

  3. Developing meta-programming support for ATS. This is something I
    myself am really interested in. I hope to be able to talk more about
    it in the future after getting some concrete examples. The design I
    have in mind is centered around of the template system of ATS2.

Cheers,

–Hongwei