[Haskell-cafe] cabal-get and HXT?

[Bulat Ziganshin]

Hello Duncan,

Tuesday, June 20, 2006, 12:33:16 PM, you wrote:

> HXT 5.3 depends on the http lib which depends on the crypto lib which
> depends on the NewBinary library. Sadly it does not appear that the
> NewBinary library is especially maintained or supported. It's not really
> ok for us to package software for Gentoo if it's not expected to be
> supported for the medium/long term. I've heard that the current
> development version of the http lib has been split so that the crypto
> dependency becomes optional. However that has not been released yet so
> again, we're stuck at the moment.

> It'd be nice if we knew that the NewBinary library were going to be
> around for a while, or knew what it's going to be replaced with.

just to let you know, Streams 0.2 library is backward compatible
with NewBinary library. now Streams 0.2 goes to beta testing stage and
is available as http://www.haskell.org/library/StreamsBeta.tar.gz
type "make install" to compile and install it. to use it instead of
NewBinary package, you should just replace NewBinary import with
import of "Data.AltBinary" module. Comparing to NewBinary module,
there are the following differences:

1) binary format is different. on the other side, it is
CPU-independent, so for example program compiled for 32-bit mode can
read data written by program compiled in 64-bit mode

2) argument order for "getBits" and "putBits" is another, more
appropriate for partial application: "putWord64 = putBits 64" and so
on

of course, that doesn't solve your immediate problem but i hope what
meanwhile this library will fill the need for serialization lib and,
moreover, allow to switch from using NewBinary almost without code
changes


ps: Streams 0.2 requires installation of my another library -
http://www.haskell.org/library/ArrayRef.tar.gz. "make install" again
can be used to install it

-- 
Best regards,
 Bulat                            mailto:Bulat.Ziganshin at gmail.com