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Experience report: using functional programming to manage a linux distribution

Published: 01 October 2007 Publication History

Abstract

We report on our experience using functional programming languages in the development of a commercial GNU/Linux distribution, discussing features of several significant systems: hardware detection and system configuration; OS installer CD creation; package compilation and management. Static typing helps compensate for the lack of a complete testing lab and helps us be effective with a very small team. Most importantly, we believe that going beyond merely using functional languages to using purely functional designs really helps to create simple, effective tools.

References

[1]
Eelco Dolstra. The Purely Functional Software Deployment Model. PhD thesis, Faculty of Science, Utrecht, The Netherlands, January 2006.
[2]
John Goerzen. Missingh. hackage.haskell.org, 2006.
[3]
Ian Jackson and Christian Schwarz. Debian policy manual. debian.org/doc/debian-policy, 1996.
[4]
Chris Okasaki. Purely Functional Data Structures. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 1998. citeseer.ist.psu.edu/okasaki98purely.html.
[5]
Mike Rubel. Easy automated snapshot-style backups with linux and rsync. mikerubel.org/computers/rsync_snapshots/, 2004.

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences
ICFP '07: Proceedings of the 12th ACM SIGPLAN international conference on Functional programming
October 2007
346 pages
ISBN:9781595938152
DOI:10.1145/1291151
  • cover image ACM SIGPLAN Notices
    ACM SIGPLAN Notices  Volume 42, Issue 9
    Proceedings of the ICFP '07 conference
    September 2007
    331 pages
    ISSN:0362-1340
    EISSN:1558-1160
    DOI:10.1145/1291220
    Issue’s Table of Contents
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Published: 01 October 2007

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