Hugs on Mac with CW6 ? ... and Haskell Graphics Lib?

[Johan Nordlander]

Hi,

My main responsibilities regarding Hugs right now is to see to that a new
release is being made that incorporates all recent bug-fixes and additions.  In
this process I hope to able to bring the Mac version of hugs into the main
distribution, although I'm not sure yet about what kind of effort that will
involve.

A Mac port of the Haskell Graphics Library would certainly be a valuable extra,
but I don't consider that as a top priority at the moment.  However, as Alastair
has pointed out in a recent message, the various options for interfacing to C
that now exist might significantly ease the task of making such a port if one
has the necessary knowledge of the Macintosh toolbox API.  I invite all
interested readers to have a go with this task, preferably using the FFI that
Alastair has implemented (which will be included in the next release, currently
it's available at http://www.cs.utah.edu/~reid/tmp/hugs98-ffi-03122000.tgz).

Since I'm using CW5 I can't say anything about the difference w.r.t CW6.  I'm
considering upgrading, though.  My own efforts in implementing Haskell graphics
on the Mac have moreover been limited to trying to make the Tk library coexist
with SIOUX.  Regrettably I don't have any new results to report here yet.

I agree with Hans that MacOS X is where the money should be spent if one
considers porting to the Mac.  However, although a lot of good things follow
from the fact that MacOS X is Unix-based, graphical Unix applications will still
need considerable rewriting since the X Windows system will not be supported
under MacOS X (at least not per default).  So time spent on writing code for the
current (Carbon-compatible) Mac Toolbox will probably still be a good
investment.

Regards,
Johan

Hans Aberg wrote:
> 
> >Hello, I was wondering whether you know if anyone has gotten
> >Hugs to compile on Mac OS 9, using CodeWarrior 6.  I am wanting
> >to get to know Haskell a little, and I have a copy of Paul
> >Hudak's book "The Haskell School of Expression", so I thought
> >it would be cool to run the book's examples on my Mac at home.
> 
> I have forwarded your letter to Johan Nordlander <nordland@cse.ogi.edu> who
> is interested in implementing graphics on MacOS Hugs. -- I do not know
> whether he is using CW Pro 5 or 6, though.
> 
> I'm & Pablo are currently using CW Pro 5, but feel free to use CW Pro 6 for
> any contributions you make. -- If I continue using CW, I will probably
> upgrade in the future.
> 
> -- If you are not currently subscribing to the Hugs-Users & Hugs_bugs
> mailing lists, please do so <http://haskell.org/>, because the kind of info
> you look for will be posted there.
> 
> > -- has anyone gotten Hugs to compile on Mac OS 9
> >     under CW 6?
> 
> I would suggest you to try compile the sources I have for CW 5 under CW 6,
> and see what breaks. Perhaps Johan has already done this. In these version,
> I have implemented AppleEvent's using the AEGizmo's package, which might
> interest you if you work at Apple -- I think a functional language light
> Haskell might be suitable to describe the high level events.
> 
> > -- has anyone gotten Hugs+HGL to work on any Mac
> >     (OS 9 or OS X)?
> 
> Yes, GCC is available under MacOS X, in Hugs compiles straight off, Atze
> Dijkstra <atze@cs.uu.nl> reports to the Hugs-users mailing list. He is
> currently working on GHC. There will (hopefully) be a interpreter GHCi
> possibly replacing Hugs in the future(?), so this work in important.
> 
> -- I think myself that it is not really worth developing for pre-MacOS X,
> and for MacOS X, it is perhaps better to simply use the freely available
> GCC.
> 
> >It looks like Metrowerks may have changed some things
> >about the SIOUX interface and/or how stdarg.h works, in
> >between CW 5 and CW 6.   (I deduce this from my feeble
> >attempts at compiling and debugging a plain Hugs with CW 6.)
> 
> The interface we use is that CW's SIOUX sources are duplicated and then
> modified. So if it is not working under CW 6, it is probably because we
> didn't put copies of all CW 5 SIOUX sources into the project.
> 
> Even though this is just a quick-fix way to develop the GUI, the components
> could be used for developing an entirely new GUI. The SIOUX CW 5 windows
> isn't a very good package, because it contains too many updates, isn't
> thread safe. So it would be better to make an entirely new GUI. This is
> probably an interesting topic, though time consuming, and I think one would
> be better off developing a new GUI for MacOS X directly.
> 
> > -- where should I look to figure out how the mac version
> >     of Hugs wants to interface with a C-based library?
> 
> There is something called HDirect, I think but I have never used it. When I
> implemented the AppleEvent's via the AEGizmo's package, I did that via
> strings. Then the problem to overcome is that Haskell is a lazy language,
> so in order to retrieve the string for a C-program, the entry on the stack
> must first be evaluated. So for that I stile some code I happened to find
> somewhere in the Hugs package. The lack of such an interface for common
> C-types seems to be a weakness of the current Hugs, but it is not so
> difficult implementing the stuff if one only figures out how Hugs works.
> 
> Another problem with Hugs is that it is not thread-safe (pure, re-entrant),
> so if one interrupts (say via an AppleEvent) the current evaluations to
> execute some other Haskell code, you may end up with trouble (or, if you
> are luck the code doesn't break.)
> 
> -- My wish is that if a new Haskell interpreter shows up, GHCi, or
> whatever, it is going to be thread-safe in the sense that multiple Haskell
> threads can be executed in parallel. This would be most important for
> applications, such as executing AppleEvent's and such. But I do not know if
> that is the plan for GHCi.
> 
> Otherwise, it was not so difficult making Hugs working with C-code.
> 
> > -- would it be easier to work with GHC or HBC instead of Hugs?
> >     (High speed is not a big concern of mine at the moment,
> >      I just want to learn and be able to play around with
> >      Haskell.)
> 
> I do not know exactly what will happen in the future: For Mac's, it seems
> most prudent to develop for MacOS X, as that is available already as a
> beta. GHCi is said to arrive in the spring, so when that arrives, so will
> be able to know. If Atze is making progress with GCC under MacOS X, that
> will simplify matters, I think.
> 
> -- Perhaps somebody else can explain the exact differences between Hugs & GHCi.
> 
> -- As it is extremely time-consuming developing a MacOS GUI, probably also
> under MacOS X, even though the situation would be better, I think it would
> be great if people agree to different parts on the same MacHugs.
> 
>   Hans Aberg
>                   * Email: Hans Aberg <mailto:haberg@member.ams.org>
>                   * Home Page: <http://www.matematik.su.se/~haberg/>
>                   * AMS member listing: <http://www.ams.org/cml/>