Integrating editline with ghc

[Judah Jacobson]

On Jan 27, 2008 6:23 PM, Manuel M T Chakravarty <chak at cse.unsw.edu.au> wrote:
> Ian Lynagh:
> > >
> > I think GHC should just always use editline. We already need to
> > support
> > using an in-tree editline for Windows, so we can also use it on other
> > platforms where editline isn't easily available or is too old. Also
> > supporting readline just makes the build system more complicated for
> > little extra benefit, and also means that there are more
> > configurations
> > to bitrot.
>
> Sure if you want to add another library into the tree that's an
> option.  However, I am not so sure whether it's going to be as easy as
> with GMP.  AFAIK libedit (which is the editline port used in Linux
> distributions - <http://www.thrysoee.dk/editline/>) needs (n)curses.
> Their web page says somebody managed to compile on cygwin, but there
> is no mention of mingw.  So, before committing to use editline/libedit
> on all platforms, it might be useful to make sure editline compiles
> fine everywhere.

You may have seen this already, but it looks like libedit doesn't work on mingw:
http://www.nabble.com/Re%3A-Integrating-editline-with-ghc-p14925360.html

However, we already don't use readline on mingw, right? So I don't
think that should be a strike against using editline exclusively.

Also, a small correction: both readline and libedit only need termcap,
not curses (which provides a termcap interface).

-Judah