[Haskell-cafe] libSDL [Tetris]

[Andrew Coppin]

Bit Connor wrote:
> Hello Andrew,
>
>   
>>>> ...yep, configure fails because it can't find "sh". (Again.)
>>>>         
>
> This error can safely be ignored on windows.
>   

Apparently so. (A bit confusing then, no?)

>> I'm rather loathed to install a Unix emulator just so I can install
>> things from Hackage.
>>     
>
> cygwin is not required to build hsSDL on windows.
>   

Glad to hear it. :-)

>> By the way, it turns out that SDL at least comes with a little text file
>> explaining how to build it on Windows. (I overlooked this the first
>> time.) Sadly, after following the instructions I still can't build it.
>> The changes it told me to make didn't seem to have any effect. (And
>> manually editing configuration files and C headers isn't my idea of a
>> good time anyway...)
>>     
>
> What error are you getting?
>   

Many pages of them. Mostly about undefined symbols. I've deleted all the 
files now; I'll maybe have another go at it later so I can tell you the 
exact error.

> The next version of hsSDL (or current darcs) will not require editing
> of C headers.
>   

Good. :-)

> Editing the cabal config file is necessary so that the SDL include
> files and libs can be found.
>   

...because Windows uses DLLs instead of [whatever it is that Unix does]?

>> Out of curiosity, is there a reason I'm trying to compile the code
>> myself in the first place? Is it just because that's "the Unix way", or
>> is there some deep reason why we can't just download prebuilt binaries?
>>     
>
> I am in favour of the idea of providing prebuilt binaries. Do you
> think something like the gtk2hs windows installer would be good?
>   

Gtk2hs is certainly drop-dead easy to install, no doubt about that. 
(Modulo some tricky path fiddling if you install Glade seperately as 
well... but that's no fault of the Haskell package.)

Personally, given how tricky it generally is to build *most* things from 
source code (you have to have all the right tools to do it), I'd prefer 
to see *all* packages available in binary form. However, I guess the 
number of packages and possible target platforms makes this prohibitive...