[Haskell-cafe] Poll & plea: State of GUI & graphics libraries in Haskell

[Paul Liu]

I reported a problem with statically linked GLFW library on Mac OS X
Lion in this thread:

http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell-cafe/2012-January/097355.html

I do not know why this is broken on Mac OS X Lion, but not on Linux or
Windows. There was an EnableGUI hack for GHC 7.2 (and previous
versions) and OS X version before Lion, but it no longer works. So I'm
not sure if it is OS X Lion, or GLFW, or GHC, or a combination of them
that caused this problem.

Regards,
Paul Liu

On Tue, Oct 1, 2013 at 7:04 AM, Carter Schonwald
<carter.schonwald at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hey simon, the two issues that have recurrently bit ghci interaction with
> foreign GUI libs are
> 1) the ghci linker.  This is fixed in head by now having ghci use the system
> linker
> 2) some GUI libs require thread local state, and ghci has a flag for that
> 3)  I'm not aware of anyone reporting newly broken libs wrt GUI bindings
> when 7.6 rolled out.  The only fix that's relevant to 7.8 is the dylinker
> bit, but that would have been a problem historically too.
>
> I believe a number of folks in #haskell-game have recently tested point one.
> (Though I should ask to double check)
>
> At the very least, I'm not aware of hearing of such a 7.6 specific ghci
> breakage before.
>
>
> On Tuesday, October 1, 2013, Simon Peyton-Jones wrote:
>>
>> Dear GHC devs
>>
>>
>>
>> See below (in red).  I do not know the details of this, but it sounds like
>> a pretty serious problem, and it used to work.  Is whatever-it-is confirmed
>> fixed in 7.8?  Do we have a test that?ll trip if it breaks again?  (I?m
>> guessing that the latter might be hard.)
>>
>>
>>
>> Thanks
>>
>>
>>
>> Simon
>>
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Haskell-Cafe [mailto:haskell-cafe-bounces at haskell.org] On Behalf Of
>> Paul Liu
>> Sent: 30 September 2013 07:18
>> To: Conal Elliott
>> Cc: Haskell Cafe
>> Subject: Re: [Haskell-cafe] Poll & plea: State of GUI & graphics libraries
>> in Haskell
>>
>>
>>
>> Hi Conal,
>>
>>
>>
>> I wasn't able to make it to last Saturday's FARM track, but I think
>>
>> there was a good chance that Paul would have demonstrated his Euterpea
>>
>> music library, which includes a GUI interface (called MUI) written on
>>
>> top of GLFW. I wrote its initial implementation (around 2009?) with a
>>
>> monadic interface that let you wire together UI components with
>>
>> signals (I believe Dan later wrote an arrow interface, but I could be
>>
>> wrong). It was actually inspired by the ideas behind your Phooey UI
>>
>> library. It should be very easy to extract this part out as a
>>
>> standalone package if there is enough interest.
>>
>>
>>
>> The only issue with it (and all other UI libraries) is that it doesn't
>>
>> play nicely in GHCi. It used to work pretty well with GHC 7.2 and 7.4
>>
>> on almost all platforms (Mac needs an extra hack), but GHC 7.6 broke
>>
>> Mac (and perhaps Windows too). GHC 7.8 supposedly should fix this
>>
>> problem.
>>
>>
>>
>> BTW, as also the author of the GLFW library on HackageDB, I've done
>>
>> barely minimal to keep this Haskell binding afloat. I'm actually
>>
>> leaning towards GLFW-b library, which is better maintained, and
>>
>> provides similar binding for GLFW C library but with a saner interface
>>
>> (no dependency on the OpenGL library, for example). If you don't need
>>
>> the two extra things that GLFW does (choice of either dynamic or
>>
>> static linking to GLFW C, and an embedded bitmap font), I suggest you
>>
>> try out GLFW-b if you are only looking for a think graphics layer with
>>
>> input+window+OpenGL.
>>
>>
>>
>> The only thing keeping GLFW-b from becoming a good foundation for a
>>
>> pure Haskell UI lib is IMHO the lack of a light-weight,
>>
>> cross-platform, and full-featured font rendering solution. I believe
>>
>> many other libraries (including Diagram) are having the same problem.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Sep 26, 2013 at 8:32 PM, Conal Elliott <conal at conal.net> wrote:
>>
>> > I'm polling to see whether there are will and expertise to reboot
>> > graphics
>>
>> > and GUIs work in Haskell. I miss working on functional graphics and GUIs
>> > in
>>
>> > Haskell, as I've been blocked for several years (eight?) due to the
>> > absence
>>
>> > of low-level foundation libraries having the following properties:
>>
>> >
>>
>> > * cross-platform,
>>
>> > * easily buildable,
>>
>> > * GHCi-friendly, and
>>
>> > * OpenGL-compatible.
>>
>> >
>>
>> > The last several times I tried Gtk2hs, I was unable to compile it on my
>> > Mac.
>>
>> > Years ago when I was able to compile, the GUIs looked and interacted
>> > like a
>>
>> > Linux app, which made them awkward and upleasant to use. wxHaskell
>> > (whose
>>
>> > API and visual appearance I prefered) has for years been incompatible
>> > with
>>
>> > GHCi, in that the second time I open a top-level window, the host
>> > process
>>
>> > (GHCi) dies abruptly. Since my GUI & graphics programs are often
>> > one-liners,
>>
>> > and I tend to experiment a lot, using a full compilation greatly thwarts
>> > my
>>
>> > flow. For many years, I've thought that the situation would eventually
>>
>> > improve, since I'm far from the only person who wants GUIs or graphics
>> > from
>>
>> > Haskell.
>>
>> >
>>
>> > About three years ago, I built a modern replacement of my old Pan and
>>
>> > V
>
>
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-- 
Regards,
Paul Liu