[Haskell-cafe] Re: real haskell difficulties (at least for me)

[Mauricio]

There's a 'stability' field on cabal description files. Maybe
it could appear after the name on the main listing. Or, all
packages marked as 'Stable' at that field could get a beautifull
color.

> I agree completely. There is not nearly enough documentation on
> packaging in haskell and too many hackage packages are broken or do
> not install. I know several people are working on improving this but
> they seem do be doing so rather quietly. Could someone briefly outline
> what improvements are planned and what stage the current work is at? I
> remember seeing some demos at anglohaskell during the summer but
> nothing since.
> 
> Jamie
> 
> On Tue, Jan 13, 2009 at 3:33 PM, Regis Saint-Paul
> <regis.saint-paul at create-net.org> wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I've seen many times the monad topic coming around on the cafe and plentiful
>> tutorials on monads have been published. However, as a complete Haskell
>> newbie coming from OOP, I felt monads were not particularly difficult to
>> grasp, and very exciting to work with.
>>
>> During my experiments with Haskell so far, the main problems I kept bumping
>> into were not related to the language but to its libraries: their
>> compilation and installation. Unfortunately, this topic has not received
>> nearly as much attention. I was unable to find a comprehensive tutorial on
>> how to deal with the variety of problems I get when trying to install
>> Hackage packages. This turned out to be (and still is) THE main source of
>> wasted time and headaches. And worse, unlike type problems, these are not
>> interesting ones to solve.
>>
>> Thus, as a beginner, the package management is what is really getting in the
>> way of switching to Haskell--not the language. Even books like Real World
>> Haskell (otherwise excellent) ignore entirely the topic. Cabal and
>> Cabal-install are clearly wonderful applications that make installing most
>> packages very straightforward. Unfortunately, whenever this "standard"
>> method for package installation fails (or when it is not available as with,
>> e.g., gtk2hs), I find myself in complete disarray.
>>
>> Below are some of the questions and issues I faced regarding package
>> management:
>>
>> - For a number of packages, cabal-install gets stuck and has to be killed. I
>> assume this is due to some difficulties in solving the dependencies and it
>> is fine, not all can be automated and cabal-install is not responsible for
>> poor packages. But the question then becomes what to do from there? Is their
>> some method to solve dependencies? How should we proceed to "debug" a
>> package installation? How do gurus deal with that? (maybe some less known
>> command line arguments? Or ways to figure out the problem and work out its
>> solution (cabal-install is silent in such case)? In particular, how to know
>> why did cabal get stuck in the first place?
>>
>> - Some packages on Hackage are reported as not building successfully with
>> GHC6.10 (e.g., encoding) while others do not build with 6.8 (e.g., salvia)
>> and the later might depend on the former...What is one supposed to do in
>> such case? For example, is it an appropriate way to proceed to compile a
>> package with one version of GHC and then use the compiled package with
>> another version of GHC? Is it safe? What could possibly go wrong? If it is
>> the right way to go, how should we setup the two GHC versions? For instance,
>> should we have a shared package configuration file and choose through the
>> path which GHC is used or is there nicer way to set this up?
>>
>> - Taking for example the "encoding" package on Hackage. Last time I tried,
>> the log was saying it fails to build on GHC 6.10, however, looking inside
>> this Hackage log, I could see a successful compilation using "preferred
>> versions". So it looks as if the thing can be compiled somehow. What should
>> one do with this information? If cabal manages to compile it using this
>> method on Hackage, then isn't cabal install just doing it on my disk? Is it
>> possible through some command line? Is it possible manually (without
>> cabal-install) and, if so, how? (I tried to copy-past the build instruction
>> as it appeared on the log...that somehow compiled, but then, I failed to
>> figure out how to install...)
>>
>> - I'm primarily a windows user and lots of my initial struggles probably
>> came from that. After many difficulties, I figured out that installing MinGW
>> and MSys was *THE* way to get a bit more of the things working. First, a lot
>> of time would be saved by just saying clearly on the GHC download page that
>> MinGW and MSys are mandatory installation (or even package that with GHC for
>> the windows distribution if license allows, who cares the extra few Mb).
>> Even if that is not technically exact, i.e., even if ghci and many trivial
>> command line programs can work without, MSys and MinGW turn out to be quiet
>> necessary whenever trying to install anything producing side effect. Making
>> it plain that these two are necessary would real come has a great time
>> savers for newbie like me on windows (personal opinion of course). Or, if
>> another path exists to go without these two, I'd be very glad to learn.
>> Besides, even these tools basic installation is not enough, you need
>> automake and various things of the like. That makes me wonder if the most
>> precious skill for programming with Haskell would not be a strong C/C++
>> programming background.
>>
>> - In face of the difficulties with windows, I switched to Linux. While some
>> things worked better, there were still lots of difficulties with package
>> compilation. For instance, it is very difficult to figure out which Linux
>> packages of a given distribution are needed for compiling this or that
>> package. Again, gtk2hs is epitome here: which C development packages are
>> needed to compile it is obscure at best (cairo, codeview, etc...). I ended
>> up querying the Debian package management with any keyword found after
>> running gtk2hs and randomly installing all the dev packages...And when
>> gtk2hs finally compiled, it failed to install anyway. As of today, I've
>> never been able to compile even the dumbest demo using gtk2hs whether on
>> linux or on windows and whether using ghc 6.8.3 or 6.10.1. On windows, the
>> automated setup install worked but did not allow me to compile with codeview
>> and I still do not know how to add codeview to the install packages. Trust
>> that I tried hard and read the docs thoroughly. Gtk2hs is just on of many
>> examples; I had problems under Linux also with, e.g., Happs, yi, database
>> things, etc. and figured out that the situation was roughly identical to
>> windows with MSys and MinGW. So Linux appears not to be the right solution
>> here. Maybe it's just that Linux users are more experienced with the GNU
>> C/C++ libraries...but it won't help a windows user to switch to Linux since
>> this knowledge can't be built out of thin air.
>>
>> - Would there be some binary version of cabal targeting various OSs? I
>> believe the Haskell platform project is about that. But without waiting for
>> a fair and objective selection of the packages (it seems to be the current
>> status of the project), I'd be happy working with some authoritative bundle
>> produced by a Haskell guru and would trust his subjective choices (who am I
>> to question these choices anyway). Or even an image (e.g., virtual box or
>> Xen) of a fully setup development environment since there are so many
>> dependencies involved in, e.g., simply compiling GHC...
>>
>> Now, one might argue that these are not Haskell problems, that they are
>> normal when dealing with non-mature packages. So let me explain why I've
>> been trying hard to install these packages:
>>
>> As a beginner with no experience with emacs, I tried to find some IDE-like
>> environment which would, at least, save me from manually reloading files in
>> ghci or help me browse the source files. Following the Haskellwiki advice,
>> that led to trying out Yi, Leksah, eclipsefp, or a Visual Studio extension.
>> To this date, NOT ANY SINGLE ONE of these worked, be it on Linux or Windows.
>> I had to resort to learning emacs which seems the only sensible choice
>> available today.
>>
>> I am particularly unskilled, no question here. But, would a charitable soul
>> take the pain of writing a comprehensive package management tutorial instead
>> of a monad one, (s)he would have my deepest gratitude :)
>>
>> Apologies for the long mail.
>>
>> -Regis
>>
>> P.S. People on #haskell are wonderful. They helped me solve many issues.
>> Unfortunately, solving specific instances of problem did not contribute much
>> to a deeper understanding of the internal working. I find myself randomly
>> trying things without knowing which would work or why; Hence this plea for a
>> tutorial.
>>
>>
>>
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