What is free?
Free monads are useful for many tree-like structures and domain specific languages. If f is a Functor then the free Monad on f is the type of trees whose nodes are labeled with the constructors of f. The word "free" is used in the sense of "unrestricted" rather than "zero-cost": Free f makes no constraining assumptions beyond those given by f and the definition of Monad. As used here it is a standard term from the mathematical theory of adjoint functors. Cofree comonads are dual to free monads. They provide convenient ways to talk about branching streams and rose-trees, and can be used to annotate syntax trees. The cofree comonad can be seen as a stream parameterized by a Functor that controls its branching factor. More information on free monads, including examples, can be found in the following blog posts: https://ekmett.github.io/reader/2008/monads-for-free/ https://ekmett.github.io/reader/2011/free-monads-for-less/.
free is a tool in the Build Automation category of a tech stack.
free Pros & Cons
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free Alternatives & Comparisons
What are some alternatives to free?
NuGet
A free and open-source package manager designed for the Microsoft development platform. It is also distributed as a Visual Studio extension.
RubyGems
It is a package manager for the Ruby programming language that provides a standard format for distributing Ruby programs and libraries, a tool designed to easily manage the installation of gems, and a server for distributing them.
Bower
Bower is a package manager for the web. It offers a generic, unopinionated solution to the problem of front-end package management, while exposing the package dependency model via an API that can be consumed by a more opinionated build stack. There are no system wide dependencies, no dependencies are shared between different apps, and the dependency tree is flat.
