[Haskell-cafe] Fw: patch applied (ghc): Remove the OpenGL family of libraries fromextralibs

[Duncan Coutts]

On Mon, 2008-07-28 at 11:11 +0100, Malcolm Wallace wrote:
> > FYI: Haskell's OpenGL binding has just been dropped from GHC's
> > extralibs, which means that it will no longer be kept in sync with GHC
> > development, at least not by GHC HQ.
> > 
> > GHC HQ has its hands full and -generally speaking - extralibs are to
> > be replaced by H(L)P, the Haskell (Library) Platform:
> 
> As someone who uses HOpenGL as a component for my own research, I must
> say that I don't entirely follow the logic of dropping it from
> extralibs.
> 
> I mean, I fully appreciate that ghc-HQ wants to remove extralibs from
> its sphere of responsibility.  And I also very much support the new
> Haskell Platform idea.
> 
> But I did also get the impression that the HP was going to start from
> extralibs and build outwards. I can't see how dropping existing working
> and tested libraries from a mini-platform, is any help at all to the new
> maintainers of HP. 

I think there's been a bit too much ho ha over this. For one thing it
was only a suggestion to reduce work and for another we've not even got
the infrastructure set up so we don't know how much work it's going to
be. If someone wants to do the work (of the maintainer) then I'm sure
it'll happen, and judging by the number of responses that would seem
likely.

> It is only likely to give grief to users who expect HOpenGL to be part
> of HP, and then later more grief to the HP maintainers when they try
> to re-integrate it, after allowing it to suffer a period of bit-rot.

I don't think that's right. The HP maintainers are not (and cannot be)
the maintainers of each individual package. That just does not scale. If
a package is suffering bit rot then it's the responsibility of the
package maintainer(s) to sort out.

Also, something not being in the platform does not at all imply bit rot.
Lack of a maintainer tends to imply bit rot. It's still on hackage and
has its existing users who would hopefully contribute fixes if the
maintainer was not to be found.

Duncan