Thinking about what's missing in our library coverage

[Simon Peyton-Jones]

The Hasekll Platform will be a *lot* more compelling if it has a GUI story. If it's hard for experts to get it built on platform X, what are the poor users supposed to do?  The whole point of the HP is to take the pain just once, and let our happy users enjoy the benefits.

If it's clear that Gtk2hs is the brand leader, I think Simon is right that we should very seriously consider putting it in the HP.   But what about Wx?  I'm reluctant to appear to sponsor one or t'other unless there are clear technical or support reasons to do so.  Having both would be fine, if their support crews are willing to do the necessary polishing etc.  

Concerning the "boost" from the HP, inclusion *will* increase the user-base of a package, and that *does* increase the incentive for the library's support crew to roll up their sleeves.  And rightly so.  That's one of the benefits of the HP!

Simon

| -----Original Message-----
| From: libraries-bounces at haskell.org [mailto:libraries-bounces at haskell.org] On
| Behalf Of Simon Marlow
| Sent: 04 August 2009 12:27
| To: Gwern Branwen
| Cc: libraries at haskell.org
| Subject: Re: Thinking about what's missing in our library coverage
| 
| On 04/08/2009 12:07, Gwern Branwen wrote:
| > On Tue, Aug 4, 2009 at 7:02 AM, Simon Marlow<marlowsd at gmail.com> wrote:
| >> Add
| >>
| >>  * binary
| >>  * getopt
| >>  * gtk2hs
| >
| > A definite yes to binary and getopt; but gtk2hs? I don't trust its
| > longevity or maintenance, and as other people have pointed out, it will
| > make the platform harder to support. As well, we risk holding back the
| > platform - hasn't gtk2hs lagged GHC releases in the past? (I seem to
| > remember some of the lags being quite lengthy.)
| 
| Adding gtk2hs would be a bold step, no doubt about it.  By proposing it
| I'm hoping to force the issues to the surface: is gtk2hs the GUI lib we
| want to recommend, or standardise on?  If it is, and it has maintenance
| issues, then those need to be addressed.  As far as I'm aware, gtk2hs is
| the only plausible option for serious GUI development in Haskell at the
| moment.
| 
| By bringing gtk2hs into the platform, we would be giving the gtk2hs
| maintainers a helpful boost; they'd get more testing for one thing.
| 
| >> Also
| >>
| >>  * keep an eye on text.  We certainly want it, but it's
| >>   a young package and there's no text I/O yet.
| >>  * decide which regex package(s) we want
| >>  * remove html? (we have xhtml)
| >>  * replace haskell-src with haskell-src-exts
| >>  * remove packedstring
| >
| > Absolutely. I thought we had already done this - didn't TH's unnecessary
| > use of packedstring get removed a while ago?
| 
| Not in the version of TH shipping with GHC 6.10.x, but it will be gone
| in GHC 6.12.
| 
| Cheers,
| 	Simon
| 
| 
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