[Yhc] Killing off nhc

[Stefan O'Rear]

On Fri, Jun 15, 2007 at 03:19:18PM +0100, Neil Mitchell wrote:
> Hi
> 
> >That you mention this *now* implies that Malcolm is having issues with
> >libgmp as well as libffi, which means that (per your plan mentioned on
> >IRC yesterday) Malcolm will get 32 bit Integers.  Why didn't he have
> >this problem with nhc?
> 
> Libraries, build system, makefile vs scons - its not incredibly well
> understood. Malcolms machine is also not able to become a buildbot
> (its behind a firewall) and is a 64 bit Mac (I think) - if someone
> could provide us with such a buildbot we'd have a better chance at
> diagnosing it.

Why is that an issue?  I thought buildbots communicated using email.

> >> 3) Libraries: We need to move to the Haskell.org libraries. This may
> >> mean increasing our build stuff, or moving to Cabal.
> >
> >Increasing our build stuff, maybe not; I'm a strong opponent of GHC's
> >extralibs :)
> 
> I mean our build infrastructure, not building more libraries by
> default necessarily - just allowing it to be done.

Ah, ok.

> >Supporting Cabal is an absolute must if we want to take over any sizable
> >chunk of the Haskell implementation's market; for implementation I
> >recommend <http://haskell.org/pipermail/libraries/2007-May/007507.html>.
> 
> Waiting for Cabal improvements may slow things down a lot. Cabal is
> obviously a very nice way to go, but may require lots of hacking to
> Cabal - which isn't the worlds nicest code base. If someone stepped
> forward saying that really like hacking Cabal and wanted to use Yhc as
> a case study that would be great!
> 
> >It might be an issue, that yhc unlike nhc cannot generate executables.
> >We should look at what Hugs' cabal support uses.
> 
> I don't think so, unlikely Hugs we can generate something that's
> nearly an executable, and we can go closer (bytecode linking) if
> necessary.

Not sure I understand - how does runhugs Foo.hs differ from yhi
Foo-linked.hbc,
from an API standpoint?

Stefan