[Haskell-cafe] Compilers

[Don Stewart]

duncan.coutts:
> > It is important to me that jhc be as widely accessible at possible. The
> > number of machines './configure && make install' will work on outnumbers
> > those that cabal install will work on hundreds or thousands to
> > one.
> 
> I've sometimes wondered why nobody has made a generic configure.ac and
> makefile that wraps the Cabal build procedure. It seems pretty
> straightforward and it might help lower barriers for some users,
> especially, as John mentions, potential users from outside the
> community.

Yes. Reuse. That's why we moved to Cabal in the first place - to avoid
reimplementing Makefiles, .hi rules, .o rules, and ld linking arguments
once per Haskell library, which wasn't scalable in the slightest.

We could come back, and have the 'make && make install' fans wrap up
cabal with a generic wrapper for people who like to type 'make'.

-- Don