Re: A future for the Windows packaging situation.
>Hopefully that wouldn't become the only way to download GHC. That wasn't my intention to suggest it to be the One True Way to download it. >Sounds great, but is it reasonable? GNU/Linux package managers AFAIK don't install Haskell libraries either Some do! On Fedora, the Haskell libraries that are shipped are prefixed with `ghc-`, and Arch Linux has become quite infamous due to the way they ship dynamically-linked Haskell libraries and executables. By GUI I was thinking of something like DNFDragora[0] and its Ubuntu counterpart (whose name I forgot). >It's true that one-liners and scripting is harder in Cmd, but simple commands (no pipes, no flow control etc.) that are the bread and butter for developers work just fine. I sense I'm missing some context; why is this an issue? cmd.exe is fundamentally a foreign interface to most Windows users, even for developers. IDEs and GUIs have reigned for a long long time in Windows Land, and Microsoft has no will to change this state of fact. WSL is a tool developed to Linux / macOS power-users who incidentally need to deal with Windows, or needed an argument to switch to the platform. In addition to all of this, shipping a .tar.lz format was a terrible mistake, for no tool shipped with Windows is able to properly handle it, but I do not wish to blame anyone, it just needs to be changed to .zip and we can be done with it. [0]: https://github.com/manatools/dnfdragora ___ ghc-devs mailing list ghc-devs@haskell.org http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/ghc-devs
Re: A future for the Windows packaging situation.
On Wed, May 13, 2020 at 12:56 PM Hécate wrote: > As some of you may have seen from the long threads in haskell-cafe@, > countless steps of various difficulty for Windows users > (excluding power-users) need to be taken in order to have a proper > working GHC / Haskell installation on their machine. Could you (or someone) summarize these issues and steps? I remember one of the big issues was *network* and the likes (which is frankly an issue with other languages as well), but from the sound of this post, I assume there's more. > Their contract would involve the initial setup of CI tasks able to > produce MSIX packages Hopefully that wouldn't become the only way to download GHC. > Ideally we could have a GUI to install libraries easily, like many > GNU/Linux package managers offer. Sounds great, but is it reasonable? GNU/Linux package managers AFAIK don't install Haskell libraries either. > The important thing to keep in mind is that the GNU/Linux and macOS > users *cannot* hold the Windows users to the same standards in > terms of CLI usability. It's true that one-liners and scripting is harder in Cmd, but simple commands (no pipes, no flow control etc.) that are the bread and butter for developers work just fine. I sense I'm missing some context; why is this an issue? -- David Macek ___ ghc-devs mailing list ghc-devs@haskell.org http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/ghc-devs
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Decorating exceptions with backtrace information
Am 12.05.20 um 23:29 schrieb Henning Thielemann: > A stack overflow sounds like unlimited recursion and thus like a > programming error. Perhaps it was just one recursion to many? Computer memory is limited. Heap overflow is also quite possible even with a program that is provably terminating. I have used 'ulimit -v' in the past to force ghc to fail rather than having to reboot my machine :-/ > In contrast to that, a program must be prepared for a > failure of "malloc". I don't see any essential difference between allocation by the runtime and explicit allocation using malloc. I think this is a good thing that in Haskell you /can/ recover from such a condition. > Memory exhaustion is an IO exception, it should be > explicit in the type. Then it must be explicit in all types, since in general all computations may exhaust the available memory. And then what use would that type information have? > Are MVar deadlocks always detected by the runtime system? My guess is that deadlock detection in general is undecidable i.e. with more than one MVar present, but I may be wrong about that. Cheers Ben ___ ghc-devs mailing list ghc-devs@haskell.org http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/ghc-devs
A future for the Windows packaging situation.
Dear GHC devs, dear maintainers, Following a discussion that took place on #ghc, I wish to spread it to the whole mailing-list, in order to receive some feedback, and plan for the future now that it has become clear that the present is rather bleak. As some of you may have seen from the long threads in haskell-cafe@, countless steps of various difficulty for Windows users (excluding power-users) need to be taken in order to have a proper working GHC / Haskell installation on their machine. Moreover, some defiance against Chocolatey has come to our ears, due to the mailing-list registration form that appears when one desires to download this package manager. I shall speak for myself by saying that I do not wish the that the Windows Haskell developers need to become a special combo of Chocolatey maintainers and Windows power users. Some GNU/Linux distributions such as Exherbo have made this their creed, the major difference being that they actually give the tools to make such a thing possible. The point of my email to you all is the following: I suggest that Haskell.org, the 501(c)(3) established in NY which, If I am not mistaken, holds the funds from various individual donations, the Amazon Smile programme and Software in the Public Interest grants, hires a company to establish a strong technological basis regarding Windows packaging. I am not talking of delegating the maintaining task to an external entity, but to provide the foundations upon which volunteers will be able to keep things running. Training in such matters would also be beneficial, so that newcomers can learn on the spot how to best interact with this. Their contract would involve the initial setup of CI tasks able to produce MSIX packages, while the people in charge of the haskell.org landing page would ease the user experience by providing clearer ways to install GHC on various platforms. Ideally we could have a GUI to install libraries easily, like many GNU/Linux package managers offer. That being said, I was also suggested the idea of a grant and/or sponsorship. What we need is less a capitalist framework around that task and more of an incentive to invest a serious amount of work and quality so that it becomes, at last, the non-issue it should have always been. The important thing to keep in mind is that the GNU/Linux and macOS users *cannot* hold the Windows users to the same standards in terms of CLI usability. I cannot weigh in my opinion on the most recent iterations of PowerShell, but Windows XP's cmd.exe was excruciating, to say the least. Now, I know some of you will prefer to have this task handled by competent volunteers, but I am under the moral obligation to say that expecting salvation and better tomorrows from people who have yet to make their presence known in the thirty years of existence of our dear language, is at best mild delusion, at worse folly that will only widen the gap between what is needed to get Haskell up and running smoothly on the Windows platform and the average skill of Windows users. I am not suggesting that my email is The True Way to follow so that everything is fixed forever, and if we can, as a community, arrive to some satisfying workflow that would benefit rather than alienate our Windows user base, this would would be wonderful. Thank you for reading until the end. Cheers, Hécate. PS: I am in no way trying to berate anyone for their implied incompetence, or imply that Windows users are stupid and/or technologically impaired. This would be misinterpreting my words and lead nowhere but to another OS war on another mailing-list. PPS: I am serious. Please stay on-topic. PPPS: I hold no share, no money or any other form of capital in any Windows packaging company we might or might not end up hiring for the task. I am speaking of experience, for my company used an external contractor to work on our landing (non-product) page, while all hands were on deck to support the product development effort. This allowed us to have a strong foundation to iterate on, and bought us countless hours of development time. ___ ghc-devs mailing list ghc-devs@haskell.org http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/ghc-devs
