Request to reopen the issue of 7.8 on El Capitan

[Adam Foltzer]

7.8.4 is was released only ten months ago; it surprises me that we'd
consider it acceptable to have such a recent release fail to work on new
machines when the fix is so small as to not even require a patch to the
source tree. In particular, I remember hearing proponents of 7.10's changes
reassure detractors that if they choose, they can continue to use 7.8.4,
which is no longer an option.

I'd ask that we (1) reconsider the decision to stop 7.8 releases, and (2)
if we stand by the decision, document the mitigations for users who would
like to build their own working version of the compiler. I just finished a
build from a source dist with `unix-2.7.1.0` and it still triggers the El
Capitan error, so I suspect it's not as simple as just dropping the new
package into `/libraries/unix/`.

On Tue, Oct 13, 2015 at 4:19 PM, Carter Schonwald <
carter.schonwald at gmail.com> wrote:

> There are no plans to do a new 7.8 release at this Time.  Even doing a
> point release for 7.10.3 is still speculative.
>
> We should reflect the capitan issue in the installation documentation.
> And or remark that only 7.10 or newer is supported on El Capitan.
>
> If a user needs a 7.8 build that works on capitan, they will need to build
> a source dist with an updated UNIX package.
>
>
> On Tuesday, October 13, 2015, Adam Foltzer <acfoltzer at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hello,
>>
>> The issue was brought up on this list [1] that the released versions of
>> GHC 7.8 do not work on El Capitan due to an older `unix` package. In a
>> subsequent GHC weekly news [2], it was announced that since El Capitan
>> wasn't yet released, it wasn't worthwhile to put more developer time into
>> 7.8.
>>
>> Now that El Capitan is out, and the existing 7.8 binaries continue to not
>> work, I'd like to reopen this issue and request a point release with an
>> updated `unix` package.
>>
>> Thank you,
>>
>> Adam Foltzer
>> Research Engineer
>> Galois, Inc.
>>
>> [1]: https://mail.haskell.org/pipermail/ghc-devs/2015-July/009403.html
>> [2]:
>> https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/blog/weekly20150721#MacOSXElCapitansupport
>>
>
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