[HOpenGL] some general feedback re GHC and HOpenGL and apologies for the email i sent as ible_snover

[Sven Panne]

John Sincock wrote:
 > [ configure/cygwin trouble ]

Just a rule of thumb: Whenever your system setup changes (new GHC, new
Cygwin, ...), you have to issue a "make distclean". But anyway, I don't
have a clue what Andre's problem is.

 > [...]
 > 1) the ghc 5.02.3 source distribution didnt come with happy, so i went
 > and got it via CVS, and that fixed that.

Well, not exactly a HOpenGL problem... :-)

 > 2) the HOpenGL distributed with the ghc 5.02.3 source would not
 > compile.

The fptools/hslibs version of HOpenGL was an intermediate attempt to
rewrite it more or less from scratch. But, as usual, GHC, the FFI, and
the module hierarchy developed at a faster pace than I did, so I finally
switched to the fptools/libraries hierarchy. There is a (small :-} hope
that this will be *the* place for future Haskell libraries, so leaving
the other versions as they are is the only choice I have with my limited
resources.

It could be the case that there will be a bug-fix release for 1.02, but
the fptools/hslibs stuff is definitely dead and I should probably remove
it from CVS. Sorry for the confusion.

 > 3) no luck there, so i just downloaded the HOpenGL 1.2 source
 > tarball, and the latest greencard tarball, compiled greencard and then
 > had another go at compiling HOpenGL. And success ! all the examples
 > compiled successfully too.

Congratulations! :-) The dependency on GreenCard is a big drawback in
retrospect, it didn't become *the* way for interfacing with C as I
hoped.  Nevertheless, GreenCard paved the way for much cooler things
like H/Direct and the current FFI. Thanks, Simon, Sigbjorn, and Thomas!

 > 4) the only other thing that bothered me a bit was when i went to test
 > the whole thing by compiling BezMesh.hs
 > [...]
 > I still dont know why the -package HOpenGL is necessary, but hey, its
 > no big deal, i will probably work that out soon enough...

Have a look at:

    http://haskell.org/ghc/docs/latest/set/packages.html

In a nutshell: A single "-package foo" can save you a plethora of GHC
options, a simple but rather efficient and comfortable way to, well,
'package' them up... :-)

 > All in all the install on linux went relatively painlessly,
 > considering what a huge and fearsome Beast the GHC is, and even
 > HOpenGL aint exactly small either.

Things have definitely improved in the last 1-2 years: GHC finds its way
to more and more platforms, and the "new" HOpenGL, using only the
standard FFI, should be even less painful to install (or even *comes*
with GHC, NHC98, Hugs, ... <= Hint ;-)

 > [...] ill shutup now

No need to, feedback is always welcome!

Cheers,
    S.