[Haskell-cafe] ANN: "Real World Haskell", now shipping

[Jason Dusek]

Andrew Coppin <andrewcoppin at btinternet.com> wrote:
> ...it has been my general experience that almost everything
> obtained from Hackage fails miserably to compile under
> Windows. (IIRC, one package even used a Bash script as part of
> the build process!) I haven't seen similar problems on Linux.
> (But I don't use Linux very often.)

  I try very hard to make my programs work on Windows; and
  indeed, one of things I appreciate about Haskell is how easy
  it is to create binaries and packages that are cross platform.

  However, the only time I actually use Windows is to build and
  test my Haskell packages. Most of the people on this list --
  and I wager, most people on the mailing lists for any open
  source programming language -- are working on a NIXalike; we
  can work with bug reports, but we can't very well be the
  fabled "many eyeballs" on a platform we don't use. Ask not
  what your Haskell can do for you, but rather what you can do
  for your Haskell :)

> About the worst problem there was Gtk2hs being confused about
> some Autoconfig stuff or something...

  Well, what else would a package built with GNU toolchain be
  confused about? Is there some miraculous language and package
  system for it where compiling libraries made with autotools is
  just a snap on Windows?

--
_jsn