[Haskell-cafe] Re: Hackage on Linux

[Erik de Castro Lopo]

Hmm, Sunday morning reply before caffeine.

Erik de Castro Lopo wrote:

> Andrew Coppin wrote:
> 
> > On Linux, if I do, say, "cabal install zlib", it falls over and tells me 
> > it can't find the zlib headers. So I go install them, rerun the command, 
> > and it works. On Windows, I issue the same command and it falls over and 
> > says that autoconf doesn't exist. It doesn't even *get* to the part 
> > where it looks for header files!
> 
> You are trying to build code that is designed on and for Linux. As such
> it will probably work on all variants of Linux, Mac OSX and a majority
> of Unix variants (after installation of the required GNU tools).
> 
> Unsurprisingly it does work on windows because windows because windows

                        ^not

> does just about everything differently to the Linux and the rest of
> the world does it.
>  
> > Interestingly, even though everybody claims that it's "impossible" to 
> > support C bindings on Windows, gtk2hs has managed it somehow. If you try 
> > to built it, it complains that it can't find the GTK+ headers. Go 
> > install those, add them to the search path, and suddenly it builds just 
> > fine. No problems with it. Go figure...
> 
> The reason that works is probably because whoever released it had
> a windows machine available and took the time to make it work.
> 
> In general, code written on and for Linux/Unix is not going compile

Remove 'not' in the line above.

> with little problem on most Unix-style OSes and close to zero chance
> of compiling without siginficant work on windows.

Erik
-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Erik de Castro Lopo
http://www.mega-nerd.com/