[Haskell] (CLARIFICATION) ghci readline support on FreeBSD: simple patch

[Brandon S. Allbery KF8NH]

On Dec 31, 2006, at 8:28 , Brandon S. Allbery KF8NH wrote:

> The problem people have been having with ghci on FreeBSD turns out  
> to be a bootstrapping issue: (...)

There seems to be a little confusion about this, from discussions on  
the IRC channel and in private mail; my apologies, I was insomniac  
while sending that message, and was less than clear as a result.

This is not a GHC bug; it's a problem with the way the FreeBSD  
"ports" infrastructure is using the bootstrap compiler.  (And my  
problem statement was slightly incorrect, it turns out; the bootstrap  
ghc-pkg is there, but is not where ghc/configure can see it.)

My patch is not a fix; it's a quick hack that stubs out the failing  
configure test, and is very much not suitable for official  
distribution.  A better fix is to use the bootstrap ghc-pkg, but  
there are complications (in particular, the bootstrap wants a libgmp  
shared library; I'm failing to understand why the final build isn't  
using a libgmp.so at all, or how the bootstrap ghc is getting around  
the same issue).

I've since checked the FreeBSD bug database for outstanding bugs  
against the lang/ghc port, and determined that neither this problem  
nor an update to GHC 6.6 are in the queue.  I've filed a proper bug  
report (detailing the actual problem and suggesting possible (actual,  
as opposed to my hack) fixes, leaving it up to the port maintainer to  
decide how to fix it properly).

I am undecided as to whether to follow up with an update to GHC 6.6.   
There are some complications here as well:

* FreeBSD ports is currently in "slush" (not quite a freeze...)  
pending 6.2-RELEASE, and will likely remain so for the next few weeks  
due to unexpected delays in the release process;
* I'll probably have to work out that proper fix for the readline  
issue first, instead of leaving it to the maintainer;
* Since GHC 6.6 is not fully backward compatible with 6.4.2, updating  
will probably require requesting a repocopy of lang/ghc to lang/ 
ghc642 and updating ports depending on it to point to the copy, then  
filing update bug reports against those dependents.  This is probably  
better handled by the port maintainer, given ports update protocols.

Given the above, probably I'll just request that the maintainer  
update the port when convenient.

-- 
brandon s. allbery    [linux,solaris,freebsd,perl]     allbery at kf8nh.com
system administrator [openafs,heimdal,too many hats] allbery at ece.cmu.edu
electrical and computer engineering, carnegie mellon university    KF8NH