Hi folks,
It’s been two months since I started serious work on Regiux, a fresh implementation of the Nix language designed for evaluation speed. My full report, including extra technical discussion, is on Mastodon here. Here are highlights for the Aux community.
There is now a flake on Github, rpypkgs, providing builders for RPython interpreters. I have warmed up Cachix using delicious free GitHub Actions CI; the cache is also named rpypkgs. Contributions are welcome and this flake may become part of some future federated nixpkgs alternative.
There is a flake, regiux, containing a technical preview with a REPL. It is incomplete software and the most advanced thing it can do today is 2 + 2. However, it does this using a version of the same architecture that GHC uses, the “G-machine”, which efficiently avoids building intermediate thunks. Also, because it’s written in RPython, I will eventually add a JIT over that G-machine. Here’s the analogy: Regiux is to CppNix and Lix as GHC is to Hugs. Mind the license: due to a lack of corporate buy-in during the design phase, I’m not releasing Regiux for commercial usage yet.
