[Hugs-bugs] RE: the woes of non-cvs haskellers

[Simon Peyton-Jones]

| I'm getting more and more worried about Haskell users who
| depend on multiple Haskell packages and compilers, but don't
| want to follow the cvs developments for all of these packages.

You are right to be worried.  That is why, with strong encouragement
from the last Haskell workshop, Isaac has been running the Haskell
Library Infrastructure Project.

	http://www.haskell.org/libraryInfrastructure/

This is not a little private project of Isaac's.  It's a major service
to us all, for the reasons Claus describes.  The more people that offer
to help him, the faster we'll get to the point where Claus's problems
will be at least ameliorated.

Of course, even with a completed library infrastructure, someone has to
do the work to fix bugs, and compile wxhaskell with the next version of
GHC etc.  But at least the dependency tracking, distribution and
installation should be much easier.

So, all you would-be library writers and users out there... volunteer to
Isaac!

Meanwhile, the idea of a set of mutually-consistent core Haskell tools
has been mooted before, and a very good idea it is too.  All it needs is
someone to do the work.

Simon


| -----Original Message-----
| From: glasgow-haskell-bugs-bounces at haskell.org
[mailto:glasgow-haskell-bugs-
| bounces at haskell.org] On Behalf Of Claus Reinke
| Sent: 04 February 2004 13:38
| To: glasgow-haskell-bugs at haskell.org
| Cc: hugs-bugs at haskell.org
| Subject: the woes of non-cvs haskellers
| 
| Dear all,
| 
| I'm getting more and more worried about Haskell users who
| depend on multiple Haskell packages and compilers, but don't
| want to follow the cvs developments for all of these packages.
| I have the feeling that Haskellers who rely on pre-packaged
| binaries are not currently getting a good impression of the
| state of the art.
| 
| To give just one concrete example, what packages do I
| recommend to someone wanting to learn a bit of Haskell, and
| do some graphics and perhaps windowing, on Windows?
| 
| - Hugs (Winhugs bug in current binary release, so better avoid
|         that and use plain Hugs?)
| - HGL (does it work with latest Hugs/GHC, or do I need older
|         versions? which ones?)
| - GHC (current binary release seems to have serious probs on
|         some Windows versions; has also seen some rapid
|         development breakage recently, e.g., TH syntax, forcing
|         other packages to play catch-up just to get working again)
| - wxHaskell (works with ghc-6.0.1, will it work with 6.2? what about
|         Hugs? what about ghc-6.4?)
| - some generic text-editor (but on Windows98, the way that .hs
|         files are associated with Hugs/GHC cannot be modified in
|         the standard dialogues, as they can for other associations,
|         so how do I associate .hs files with an editor? I wouldn't
|         want to recommend some beginner editing the registry for
|         that purpose..)
| 
| The issues are usually small, but there are many of them, each
| package has its own, and all too often the response is "fixed in
| CVS, will be in next release".
| 
| Of course, the next release is a while a away and by that time,
| there'll be a different set of small issues plagueing the next set
| of binary releases. So, just getting someone started requires
| careful investigation/testing and some thinking (instead of:
| "just download and install the latest Haskell starters set").
| 
| A modular way to fix this would be to have at least once-a-month
| patch updates of binary packages, so that one would never be
| more than a month away from the fixed versions (instead of having
| to wait for the next releases of everything).
| 
| A broader approach would be to try and show a united Haskell
| tools front to the general Haskeller: Identify a core set of Haskell
| tools (the above four would be my initial suggestion), and make
| sure that the latest binary releases for these are always in synch
| with each other. In other words, someone could go download
| them, make a "Haskell tools, Spring 2004" CD, and be sure that
| they actually work together while he/she's trying to learn Haskell.
| 
| Both GHC and Hugs have had release candidate testing in the
| past, but experience and mailing list archives show that there's
| always a number of issues that are only detected after the
| binary releases. On Windows at least, it seems that everyone
| is relying on Sigbjorn to do all the packaging - couldn't the
| creation of updated installers be automated (or Haskellised),
| so that he'd only have to be bothered for the initial packaging,
| not for patchlevel updates?
| 
| There are similar issues for Haskellers needing a larger set of
| tools and libraries, but those will hopefully be addressed by
| the library infrastructure project in the long run, so I'm just
| asking about the state of the core tools here.
| 
| Opinions?
| Claus
| 
| 
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