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Linear base

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Linear base is a standard library for developing applications with linear types. It is named linear-base to be an analog to the original base package that ships with GHC.

The purpose of linear-base is to provide the minimal facilities you need to write practical Linear Haskell code, i.e., Haskell code that uses the -XLinearTypes language extension.

Motivation

Why do you need linear-base to write linear projects?

  1. Data types, functions and classes in base are not linear types aware. For instance, if n is a linearly-bound Int, the RHS of a definition cannot write n + 1 — this will not type check. We need linear variants of Num, Functors, Monads, ($), etc.

  2. This library exports new abstractions that leverage linear types for resource safety or performance. For example, there are new APIs for file and socket I/O as well as for safe in-place mutation of arrays.

Getting started

-XLinearTypes is released with GHC 9, and linear-base is released on Hackage and Stackage.

All source files with linear types need a language extension pragma at the top:

{-# LANGUAGE LinearTypes #-}

To get in touch, you can join our Discord server

User Guide

If you already know what -XLinearTypes does and what the linear arrow a %1-> b means, then read the User Guide and explore the examples/ folder to know how to use linear-base.

You can also find a table comparing base and linear-base typeclasses here.

Learning about -XLinearTypes

If you're a Haskeller who hasn't written any Linear Haskell code, don't fear! There are plenty of excellent resources and examples to help you.

Tutorials and examples

Reading material

Talks

Contributing

Linear base is maintained by Tweag.

To contribute please see the Design Document for instructions and advice on making pull requests.

A great first step is to join our Discord server

Licence

See the Licence file.

Copyright © Tweag Holding and its affiliates.