[Haskell-cafe] Please repair Hugs-for-Windows download links

[Thorkil Naur]

On Wed, Apr 29, 2020 at 05:58:04PM +1200, Anthony Clayden wrote:
> ...
> On Sun, Apr 26, 2020 at 10:55:25AM -0500, Vanessa McHale wrote:
> > Isn’t hugs unmaintained? ...

Hm, what does "unmaintained" mean? Sure, long time (more than 10 years)
no updates. Nevertheless, there doesn't seem to be a large number of
requests for changes or corrections that are left without response. You
may say, there are no users, hence no problems. You may also say that
the users are simply quietly satisfied.

And there are a few users, as witnessed by Doug's

  https://mail.haskell.org/pipermail/hugs-users/2018-July/000902.html

and Anthony's

  https://mail.haskell.org/pipermail/hugs-users/2018-July/000900.html

a bit further along in the same thread.

When I started using Haskell in 2003, inspired by my use of Miranda in a
course some 10 years before that, haskell.org had a "Implementation"
button with Hugs, nhc, and GHC (of course) and perhaps more, Helium,
jhc, uhc, lhc come to mind, I am not sure. Even on top of just wishing
the Hugs links repaired, that list would also be high on my wish list.

To be sure, I would never recommend any unmaintained program, such that
Hugs very clearly labels itself on https://www.haskell.org/hugs (the
wording is "no longer in development"), for any "serious" use.
Nevertheless, it seems a waste not to maintain these references to
valuable material, whether for educational, historical or just
entertainment reasons. One valuable development, not particularly recent
but worth mentioning, is Andy Gill's hpc, Haskell Program Coverage, that
took place initially, as I understand, using nhc with Malcolm Wallace
guidance.

And Hugs installations are not entirely unavailable: Fedora Linux
presently has a working hugs98. And there is a FreeBSD hugs98 port, but
it didn't work for me. And, of course, the WinHugs installation proceeds
smoothly, recently tried on a Windows 10 machine, thanks Neil Mitchell.

I have used both Hugs and GHC extensively over the years and still do:
Recently to debug code to calculate ln() in double precision in an Algol
system for a 40/42-bit Danish computer, the GIER, from 1962:

  https://datamuseum.dk/wiki/GIER/GAIII_DPA_double_ln()_fejls%C3%B8gning

(In danish, I'm afraid, the english translate.google.com version is
fair.) So when the verdict is

> > ... Cool stuff but definitely vintage!

, I can only agree.

I have also tried other Haskell implementations, mainly for fun, but not
kept up their use, for various reasons.

> ...

Just re-stating my original wish for corrected Hugs links, whether
considered unmaintained or not.

Best
Thorkil