ghci-haskeline (was: Re: ANNOUNCE: GHC version 6.10.1 - EditLine / terminal incompatibility?)

John O'Donnell jtod at dcs.gla.ac.uk
Fri Nov 21 11:52:28 EST 2008


Simon says...

> Could we reduce GHC's surface area by just using haskeline and dumping
> readline/editline support altogether?

I'm in favor of doing this.  For portability and consistency, it's better
to have just one version that is unencumbered by these license issues,
as long as it works on the main platforms (including Macintosh - has that
been tested?).  If ghc tries to support both readline and editline, along
with haskeline, applications written in Haskell will have different behaviours
depending on the combination (platform,line-editor).  Better just to simplify.

John O'Donnell 

-----Original Message-----
From: glasgow-haskell-users-bounces at haskell.org on behalf of Simon Peyton-Jones
Sent: Fri 2008-11-21 10:39
To: Simon Marlow; Judah Jacobson
Cc: glasgow-haskell-users at haskell.org
Subject: RE: ghci-haskeline (was: Re: ANNOUNCE: GHC version 6.10.1 - EditLine / terminal incompatibility?)
 
| > I've actually been experimenting with something similar:
| >
| > darcs get http://code.haskell.org/~judah/ghci-haskeline/
....
| >
| > Current benefits over the readline/editline versions:
| > - Works on Windows
|
| I can attest to that.  Nice going Judah!
|
| $ cabal update
| $ darcs get http://code.haskell.org/~judah/ghci-haskeline/
| $ cd ghci-haskeline
| $ cabal install
|
| and I have a GHCi on Windows that can do completion, history search, and
| exits when I hit ^D.  That's made my day.

If I had £1 for every email I've seen in the last decade about platform-related or license-related problems with readline and now editline, I'd be rich man.  Super rich.

Could we reduce GHC's surface area by just using haskeline and dumping readline/editline support altogether? Yes that might reduce functionality slightly -- readline/editline are complicated for good reasons. But it's increase functionality in other ways (as Judah says), and by giving us one piece of software that we understand, and can distribute with GHC, it might remove a whole class of problems.

Simon
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