GHC Manuals online

[Simon Marlow]

Claus Reinke wrote:
>>> What I was actually googling for is "ghc haskell language pragma", and
>>> then you get loads of results from manuals before GHC had a language
>>> pragma. I don't mean searching to find the documentation, I mean
>>> searching to find content within the documentation.
>>
>> This just shows you how screwed up Google currently is.
> 
> i wouldn't go that far, but i have had the impression that its performance
> doesn't impress me as much as it used to. or perhaps my own google skills
> have deteriorated. if i know what i'm looking for, it is still great. 
> but when
> the search items are still cloudy, i sometimes feel as if i was back to 
> altavista,
> before google came along.
> 
> when stumbling across a haskell or ghc problem, i used to be able to 
> find some relevant mailing list threads within a few hours, or if the 
> issue was mingw-related, within an afternoon or so. the time being taken 
> up by finding the right context and keywords to search for, 
> incrementally evolving the search patterns with increasing awareness of 
> context - since i follow haskell daily, but only search mingw for 
> issues, every few months or so, one is easier than the other.

I find the following works quite well for searching the mailing lists:

   - download all the archives from haskell.org
   - import them into Thunderbird
   - use Google Desktop Search, or thunderbird's search

On Linux I suppose you'd have to use an alternative to GDS like Beagle or something.

> mailing list postings to home in on the right static resources. i have, 
> at times, suspected that google no longer indexes all of haskell.org. 

Google has never indexed all the mailing lists on haskell.org properly.  I never 
found out why, although I believe John Peterson looked into it at one stage and 
concluded that it wasn't easy to fix.  Google does index the mirrors though 
(mailarchive.com, gmane.org).

Cheers,
	Simon