[Haskell-cafe] Windows Build Boxes (was Cabal failures...)
Gershom Bazerman
gershomb at gmail.com
Wed Nov 21 03:55:21 CET 2012
If some person or group of people is willing to administer and maintain
windows build/testing boxes for the good of the Haskell community
(perhaps even just for core infrastructure and an extended set of
"blessed" libraries), I would be willing to contribute a decent sum to
the procurement of these machines. I'm sure I am far from alone in this.
It would be a very good use of our community resources to co-ordinate
such efforts.
Cheers,
Gershom
On 11/20/12 9:21 PM, Clark Gaebel wrote:
> +1 to this. The friction of finding, setting up, and using Windows
> isn't even comparable to just sshing into another unix box and testing
> something quickly.
>
> As a university student, I also find it relatively rare that I get to
> test on a Windows machine. My personal computer runs linux, my
> technical friends run linux or osx, and my non-technical ones run osx.
> Also, all the school servers that I have access to run either FreeBSD
> or Linux.
>
> If I want to run something on linux system, I have about 40 different
> computers that I can ssh into and run code on.
>
> If I want to run something on osx, I just have to call a friend and
> ask if they can turn on their computer and allow me to ssh in (to my
> own account, of course).
>
> If I want to run something on Windows, I have to track down a friend
> (in person!), ask to borrow their computer for a few hours, get
> administrator access to install the Haskell Platform, get frustrated
> that HP hasn't been upgraded to 7.6, and give up.
>
> It's just not practical, especially for the large amount of small
> (<500 LOC) packages on Hackage.
>
> - Clark
>
>
> On Tue, Nov 20, 2012 at 9:05 PM, Erik de Castro Lopo
> <mle+hs at mega-nerd.com <mailto:mle+hs at mega-nerd.com>> wrote:
>
> Albert Y. C. Lai wrote:
>
> > Clearly, since >90% of computers have Windows, it should be
> trivial to
> > find one to test on, if a programmer wants to. Surely every
> programmer
> > is surrounded by Windows-using family and friends? (Perhaps to the
> > programmer's dismay, too, because the perpetual "I've got a
> virus again,
> > can you help?" is so annoying?) We are not talking about BeOS.
> >
> > Therefore, if programmers do not test on Windows, it is because
> they do
> > not want to.
>
> I have been an open source contributor for over 15 years. All the
> general
> purpose machines in my house run Linux. My father's and my
> mother-in-law's
> computers also run Linux (easier for me to provide support). For
> testing
> software, I have a PowerPC machine and virtual machines running
> various
> versions of Linux, FreeBSD and OpenBSD.
>
> What I don't have is a windows machine. I have, at numerous times,
> spent
> considerable amounts of time (and even real money for licenses)
> setting
> up (or rather trying to) windows in a VM and it is *always*
> considerably
> more work to set up, maintain and fix when something goes wrong.
> Setting
> up development tools is also a huge pain in the ass. And sooner or
> later
> they fail in some way I can't fix and I have to start again. Often its
> not worth the effort.
>
> At my day job we have on-demand windows VMs, but I am not officially
> allowed (nor do I intend to start) to use those resources for my open
> source work.
>
> So is it difficult for an open source contributor to test on windows?
> Hell yes! You have no idea how hard windows is in comparison to say
> FreeBSD. Even Apple's OS X is easier than windows, because I have
> friends who can give me SSH access to their machines.
>
> Erik
> --
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Erik de Castro Lopo
> http://www.mega-nerd.com/
>
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