[Haskell-cafe] Hoogle and Network.Socket

John A. De Goes john at n-brain.net
Sat Feb 21 09:25:49 EST 2009


I think the (valid) concern is that too many people are choosing  
platform-specific packages when there are alternatives available  
(albeit not as convenient in some cases), and this really hurts the  
Windows community because Windows is so radically different from all  
the other operating systems.

Not showing platform-specific packages by default *might* make package  
writers more likely to develop cross-platform packages. We've heard  
many times someone say, "I don't know if it works on Windows, never  
really thought of that."

Regards,

John A. De Goes
N-BRAIN, Inc.
The Evolution of Collaboration

http://www.n-brain.net    |    877-376-2724 x 101

On Feb 21, 2009, at 3:55 AM, Martijn van Steenbergen wrote:

> Hi Neil,
>
> Neil Mitchell wrote:
>> If a function isn't available on all OS's then all Hoogle would be
>> encouraging you to do is break compatibility and stop me from using
>> your software. If a function is only available on one OS you will
>> certainly have to deliberately choose to search for that, and it will
>> never show up by default.
>> For what shows up by default I more meant other packages. Should
>> Gtk2hs show up by default? What about tagsoup? What about base?  
>> Things
>> like Win32 will never show up by default.
>
> How about allowing an extra search flag +windows that reveals  
> windows-specific APIs? Likewise for other OS's.
>
> Being able to enable API for a specific package requires me knowing  
> in what package I want to look, while an OS flag doesn't, all the  
> while still making very explicit I want to look for OS-specific API.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Martijn.
>
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