nix develop -f shell.nix -c cabal repl
nix run .#regen to fix formatting and plutarch-core.nix
Plutarch (2) is currently very much still a WIP.
The first backend that will be focused on is likely Untyped Plutus Core, due to demand from users.
A C backend will likely be the next.
Plutarch (2) aims to be an eDSL framework. Given a task, it is practice to make an ad-hoc eDSL for that task, Accelerate, Clash, Plutarch 1, etc.
Approaches like Compiling with Categories exist, but this still falls short. We lack interoperability, and freedom.
An eDSL often has functions, but not always. It will very often not support the full feature set of Haskell (and if it did, you could instead translate STG to your backend!). We wish to type these limitations.
Plutarch (2) is the (WIP) result of over a year of research and pondering, aiming to solve all these issues.
There are many small novel contributions, albeit the biggest one is Term.
It looks like Free, but without Pure.
It supports reordering, and partial reinterpretation (!), without sacrificing
support for linearity.
It is very powerful.
Other small ideas include eDSL-level optimisations, top-level common expression elimination through hashing, avoiding redoing work through sharing thunks, supporting normal ADTs through Generics and a recursive HKD-like construction, each of which might be of independent interest too.
We have a channel in the following Discord (unfortunately, but we're using GH anyway...) guild for Plutonomicon: https://discord.gg/722KnTC8jF However, this is mostly Cardano-related, so you might feel out of place.
Feel free to ask questions via GH issues, or even send me an e-mail.