unix package

[Bjorn Bringert]

On Jun 28, 2007, at 18:25 , Bryan O'Sullivan wrote:

> Bayley, Alistair wrote:
>
>> The unix package isn't available to Windows users. Unsurprising,  
>> maybe.
>> But, given that it seems to be a layer over the Posix API, would  
>> it be
>> reasonable to request that the unix package is made available on
>> Windows?
>
> I've been thinking about just this, too.
>
> The underlying problem is that Haskell's portable I/O-related  
> libraries are underpowered, particularly the stuff in  
> System.Directory.  Try doing any significant filesystem-related  
> work using only the portable APIs and you'll see what I mean.
>
> A portable library that put a POSIX-like wrapper atop filesystem  
> operations would be a big win, particularly if it were distributed  
> as a standard library.  This is the approach that Python's standard  
> libraries take, and it works well.
>
> If I had a vote on how Ian might spend his time, it would be on  
> something like this, which would have direct value to programmers  
> by addressing a significant deficit of the current standard  
> libraries. Splitting up the unix package seems more like an  
> inconsequential janitorial task.  Given finite resources, I'd  
> prefer to tackle the task with greater benefits.

I started working on this for implementing the file operations needed  
by the tar package, but didn't take it further than that. Here's what  
I have so far:

http://www.cs.chalmers.se/~bringert/darcs/unix-compat/

/Björn