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

[Andrew Coppin]

Jason Dusek wrote:
> 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.
>   

Certainly the one or two "pure Haskell" packages out there (e.g., 
PureMD5) seem to build without issue. The trouble is that almost all 
useful Haskell packages are bindings to C libraries, and that varies by 
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 :)
>   

As I say, last time I tried this, I'd just failed to build half a dozen 
other interesting packages, so by the time I'd got to trying to get 
database access working, I was frustrated to the point of giving up.

(The IRC channel is great - but only if the people you need to speak to 
happen to be there at the exact moment when you ask your question. 
Apparently I'm in a different timezone to everybody else.)

>> 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?
>   

No no - I meant the worst problem _on Linux_ was Gtk2hs getting 
confused. (It built OK on OpenSuSE, but appears not to like Ubuntu very 
much.)