[Haskell] -compiler-options vs {#-LANGUAGE Flags-#}

[John Meacham]

On Sat, Mar 24, 2007 at 01:18:30PM +0100, Lennart Kolmodin wrote:
> I think the LANGUAGE pragma is much better than OPTIONS_GHC, for several
> reasons.
> 
> * It's compiler independent.
> * It's clear that you're only adding extensions, not any random compiler
> flag.
> * It plays nicely with Ian's proposal on
> http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cabal.devel/464

A very big problem with the pragma as it relates to
Distribution.Extension is that it is unextensable. The definition in
Distribution.Extension really should be 

> newtype Extension = Extension String

and the flags transformation should be something like

> extensionsToFlags :: Compiler -> [Extension] -> ([Extension],[Opt])
> extensionsToFlags = ...

enumerating the compilers or allowed extensions in the API is very
limiting as well as complicating to the code.

This is a major problem with Distribution.* in general actually that
needs to be cleaned up at some point. (Distribution2.* ?) hrm..

        John

-- 
John Meacham - ⑆repetae.net⑆john⑈