Haskell Support on Windows (Simon Peyton Jones)

Carter Schonwald carter.schonwald at gmail.com
Tue Apr 1 13:45:30 UTC 2014


Hey roman!
If you get stuck getting ghc to build on windows, please ask for help on
the ghc mailing lists and/or on the #ghc channel on freenode.
Just having more folks that regularly try to build and use ghc on windows
would be huge.
There's also countless ways to contrib To ghc too.

On Tuesday, April 1, 2014, Roman Kuznetsov <kuznero at hotmail.com> wrote:

> Hello,
>
> -- sorry for incomplete email - typing from mobile is not easy :)
>
> I would like to participate in GHC on Windows. But I am a normal windows
> developer and don't know much of that rather weird (to me) tool chain used
> in this case. I frankly tried a few times before - every time with the same
> result - I never get to the point, but trying to understand just how to
> build it. I know there is a wiki, etc.
>
> But my question (and the reason I write here): is it possible to have some
> kind of mini-course, a crush-course on developing GHC on Windows (as well
> as on other platforms) - video course ... this is what comes to mind after
> all these Coursera, Pluralsight, etc.
>
> You could say - there is a wiki. But that's not enough. Maybe it's just
> me... I will take another analogy. Even though I'm coding for Windows
> primarily, I am a linux user. So, I switched from Ubuntu to Arch Linux
> recently which was possible due to the quality of their wiki documentation
> (Arch is known to not be as user friendly as *buntu like systems).
>
> Sorry for not referring to any concrete problems, I just tried stating
> what I think didn't let me start working with that.
>
> /Roman
>
> On 01 апр. 2014 г., at 15:26, "Carter Schonwald" <
> carter.schonwald at gmail.com<javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','carter.schonwald at gmail.com');>>
> wrote:
>
> Kyle, we need you to help us with windows support! :-)
>
> On Tuesday, April 1, 2014, Simon Peyton Jones <simonpj at microsoft.com<javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','simonpj at microsoft.com');>>
> wrote:
>
>  A couple of poor assumptions are made here.
>
>
>
> I’m not sure where “here” is.   In my email I specifically said exactly
> what you are saying (only I was not as eloquent as you).
>
>
>
> What we need is some developers who are willing to give some love and
> support to the Windows version of GHC.  And *they* really are thin on the
> ground, unfortunately.
>
>
>
> Simon
>
>
>
> *From:* ghc-devs [mailto:ghc-devs-bounces at haskell.org] *On Behalf Of *Kyle
> Van Berendonck
> *Sent:* 01 April 2014 13:54
> *To:* ghc-devs at haskell.org
> *Subject:* Re: Haskell Support on Windows (Simon Peyton Jones)
>
>
>
> A couple of poor assumptions are made here.
>
> The first is that the userbase of GHC on Windows is poor. This is false.
> In fact, the poor state of Windows is mentioned on #haskell more frequently
> as of late. In the last week I've talked almost every day to (different)
> people who have had Windows woes with using GHC. The hacker-base isn't here
> at the moment - I agree, but the user-base most certainly is. Could this be
> a problem with the demographic, or could it just be that Windows
> development isn't inviting? The build system and default test failures
> in-particular are a source of discouragement.
>
> The second assumption is that GHC/Haskell will be worth a dime in the
> RealWorld without Windows as a primary tier platform. I'm going to put a
> crude guess that given the overwhelming magnitude of C#/F# coming up on my
> local careers portal that there's far more industry on Windows than on OSX
> or Linux. Those are all the businesses where the probability that they will
> ever touch Haskell goes from `probably not right now` to `impossible`. Let
> me also remind you that Windows still holds 89.2% of operating system
> market share ie the people that hackers and developers actually have to
> deploy their applications to.
>
> Sorry to sound fumey, but there's all this suggesting that everyone would
> have a better day if we dropped Windows (let's be honest, if it wasn't a
> primary tier platform nobody would have fixed it for 7.8), but I doubt few
> of the people who think it's a "great idea" or sslt have actually thought
> through whether it's the best thing for Haskell or just the best thing to
> get 7.8 into their hands a couple weeks sooner.
>
> Regards.
>
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