Integrating editline with ghc

[Manuel M T Chakravarty]

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.

Ok, that simplifies matters.

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

At <http://www.thrysoee.dk/editline/> it says to link with

   gcc -o fileman fileman.c -ledit -lcurses

and explicitly says "Note libcurses, as well as libedit, should be  
linked to Editline enabled programs".

Manuel