[Haskell-cafe] OS Abstraction module??

[David Roundy]

On Tue, Oct 23, 2007 at 09:10:02AM -0400, Isaac Dupree wrote:
> 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.

You would, at least, know that the Windows-specific Haskell bindings
themselves compile.  I don't think this is worth the ugliness, but it is
something anyhow.
-- 
David Roundy
Department of Physics
Oregon State University