[Haskell-cafe] Simple HTTP lib for Windows?

[Donald Bruce Stewart]

clawsie:
> hi, i have popped in on this thread before to mention my own extension
> to Network.HTTP (http://www.b7j0c.org/content/haskell-http.html,  
> providing get() and head()).
> 
> i would like to thank bjorn for his work on Network.HTTP and echo his
> observation that this package needs some work and active maintainence.
> i would also suggest that people needing http functionality extend his
> package instead of writing their own or providing quick and dirty hacks
> that cover 80% of the problem space, as i think others have discussed.
> 
> http is a simple protocol, but it is not trivial, and reference
> implementations need to address the standard as completely as
> possible. no one is going to take haskell seriously as a practical
> tool if the libraries don't address the corner cases, and http has
> some. reading through the Network.HTTP code, it does appear
> that the original authors and present maintainers are concerned with
> standards conformance, which means reading the standard.
> 
> http is becoming as integral to the development environment as file
> access. haskell needs an authoritative native implementation or a ffi
> wrapper to libcurl. developers also need to know that there is *one*
> reference library for http support (like perl's LWP)...likewise i
> think the lack of a single reference library for sql/db access is also
> hurting haskell adoption. perl wins here again with DBI.

right. there's a bit of a loose group of people who want to take on the
http library and practical, authoritative version, but its a lot of
work. Starting with the great code already in HAppS is one option too.

So yes, we need to fix it. There's people to do it. Now we just need
social factors to kick in and make it happen!

-- Don