[Haskell] Haskell Xlib bindings

[Sven Panne]

On Monday 12 February 2007 18:34, Benjamin Franksen wrote:
> I agree that this would be nice. (Disclaimer: I haven't the slightest clue
> about XSLT and how it is used to generate code from XML protocol
> descriptions. However, I assume this won't be that much harder than to find
> some method to 'auto-ffi' the huge XCB_Protocol API into Haskell.)

The XSLT code to generate the C binding (c-client.xsl) is about 56kB. :-P 
Depending on the build system, personal preferences etc. it might make more 
sense to use Haskell code to transform the XML protocol description.

> Have you seen this:
>
> lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xcb/2006-January/001278.html ? The sources
> are here http://webcvs.freedesktop.org/xcb/xhsb/ It could be starting
> point, at least...

The code needs some tweaks to make it compile and work with my local XCB 
library. Anyway, this is only a tiny hand-written demo, not a starting point 
for a project.

> Yes, this is going to be the most difficult part. I have taken a look at
> another XCB paper, which is about the XCB_Connection layer and explains how
> the problem has been modeled using the Z specification language
> (freedesktop.org/software/xcb/usenix-zxcb.pdf). Very interesting, this. I
> wonder if one could derive a Haskell solution (more or less) directly from
> the Z spec. Or, maybe, even simplify the spec, leveraging Haskell's more
> high-level interface to multithreading (STM?).

Ignoring Z for the moment, I've started to hack the connection layer for XHB, 
which seems to be feasible. Two problems:

   * XCB depends on a handful XauFOO routines for authentication. It is not 
clear to me yet if we should do so in Haskell, too, or if we should 
re-implement that in Haskell, too. So for first tests no authentication will 
be offered. Welcome "xhost +"! ;-)

   * Haskell's standard networking libraries are really, really awful: No IPv6 
support, no getaddrinfo & friends, slightly obscure combination of features, 
one has to be careful about the byte order etc. etc.  This has been mentioned 
several times already, but I don't know if there is currently anybody working 
actively on this. :-(

Using formal methods somehow would be nice, but there are more fundamental 
things waiting to be solved, as it seems...

> Sources can be downloaded from the XCB site (a handful of tar.gz files).
> Build and install was rather uncomplicated here (debian/etch, amd64).
> Unfortunately, freedesktop.org seems to be down at the moment, so none of
> the above links will work until they are online again.

Using version control system no. x in my life (where x > 10 :-P * * *) to 
download the latest stuff, I've been able to build XCB locally. This is very 
straightforward after one has figured out the minimum amount of code to 
download.

Cheers,
   S.