[Haskell-cafe] OS Abstraction module??

[Isaac Dupree]

Galchin Vasili wrote:
> In
> discussing this OS Abstraction Layer, I think I am thinking of some notion
> of "laziness" (read ... decisions made at run-time .. not compile-time ..
> otherwise I think we have to resort to ifdefs which are not so nice and
> require a lot of code maintenance.)

It is difficult on existing systems to make a binary that can link with 
multiple alternate sets C functions.  Also you may need the 
corresponding header-files when compiling.  (But non-binary 
implementations such as Yhc might be able to lazily only look up a 
foreign-imported function once it's called, it perhaps being _|_ if not 
found).  I can't speak to how much there are code maintenance issues of 
ifdefs... but if you don't have a Windows system to test against, for 
example, then you'll *never* know if Windows-specific parts of your code 
work, ifdefs or not.

Isaac