ANNOUNCE: GHC version 6.10.1 - EditLine / terminal incompatibility?

[Philip Hölzenspies]

On Nov 19, 2008, at 6:25 PM, Simon Peyton-Jones wrote:
> Would it be worth adding this hard-won lore somewhere on a Wiki  
> where it can be found later?

Dear Simon, all,

I don't think logging a specific option on the Wiki is particularly  
useful (maybe you would have a default editrc file), because, of  
course, everybody has their own particular wishes. For example, aside  
from the word-jumping Duncan suggested, I alway use zsh-like history  
searching, so I like:

bind "^[[A" ed-search-prev-history
bind "^[[B" ed-search-next-history

Also, there are no de facto escape sequences, because special keys  
(like function and arrow keys) have different sequences on different  
terminals. A useful tip that may be useful to include in the wiki is  
an easy trick that will help you find out your terminals escape  
sequences. I usually just like to start an application that has no  
editline or readline capabilities and press the keys. Telnet is one of  
my favorite applications for this purpose.

Something that I would personally very much enjoy is a clear and  
unmistakable warning from configure when editline is not found. After  
installing libedit-devel (my ghci-6.10.1 finally has comfortable  
editing now), I checked config.log; there's not even a mention of  
libedit capabilities. Maybe a general summary at the end of configure  
of all the optional capabilities that were or were not configured. As  
an inspiration, look at gtk2hs' configure output.

Regards,
Philip