Re: [Haskell-cafe] I do not want to be a bitch, but ghc-6.8.3 and haskell binary policy are really horrible.

[Jules Bean]

John Van Enk wrote:
Could you, perhaps, outline a little more of what you're trying to do? 
I'm having a hard time seeing what exactly you're doing, and why you 
can't use the package provided by your distribution.


We'd love to help you, but you're not being very clear with what your 
problem is.


As far as I can see, his problem was

cabal update && cabal upgrade

which seems like a sensible command to run, but actually isn't.

Jules

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Re: [Haskell-cafe] I do not want to be a bitch, but ghc-6.8.3 and haskell binary policy are really horrible.

[Duncan Coutts]

On Wed, 2008-10-15 at 09:25 +0800, Magicloud wrote:
> Thank you for your reply.
> So the main information I got is that cabal is not safe. And my problems 
> are all related to cabal, I think, dependency, ABI version

You're quite right that Cabal does not track ABI versions. So it is
quite possible to break dependencies of installed packages by doing
things like unregistering or rebuilding a dependent package such that it
gets a different ABI.

There is ongoing work to make it harder to shoot yourself in the foot,
by tracking the ABIs of installed packages.

In the mean time all these problems can be solved by rebuilding things
cleanly.

It does look like there is a bug in the ghc build system where if the
bootstrapping compiler has the same or higher versions of packages that
the ghc build system installs then things can go wrong. We've just
noticed this with ghc-6.10 but it seems likely the same bug is present
in the ghc-6.8.x build system.

Duncan

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Re: [Haskell-cafe] I do not want to be a bitch, but ghc-6.8.3 and haskell binary policy are really horrible.

[Magicloud]

My linux distribution does not have a ghc. It is customed by my company. 
So I have to install it from souce.
And the reason that some situation I did not descript clearly is that 
they are long time ago, I cannot remember the details


John Van Enk wrote:
Could you, perhaps, outline a little more of what you're trying to do? 
I'm having a hard time seeing what exactly you're doing, and why you 
can't use the package provided by your distribution.


We'd love to help you, but you're not being very clear with what your 
problem is.


/jve


On Tue, Oct 14, 2008 at 9:25 PM, Magicloud 
<[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
> wrote:


Thank you for your reply.
So the main information I got is that cabal is not safe. And my
problems are all related to cabal, I think, dependency, ABI
version
I hope everything could be better soon. At least, tools should not
block the way of producing.


Thomas Schilling wrote:

2008/10/14 Magicloud <[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>:
 


Sorry, let me say it this way:
1. Ghc cannot be bootstrap-installed. And the ghc-6.8.3
binary from official
website also cannot run in my box, some kind of overflow
error. So I have to
look for help, a few hours later, I found 6.4.2 (I am not
sure) which runs
well in my box, and install ghc-6.8.3 indirectly.
   



Hm, the only issue with binary installers I had were old
versions of
some libraries which could be resolved by adding a few
symlinks.  What
system are you on?

 


2. After `cabal update && cabal upgrade`, ghc-6.8.3 cannot
be built.
   



Which version of cabal-install ( cabal --version ) are you using?
Note that 'cabal upgrade' is not guaranteed to work since
libraries on
hackage don't always specify their dependencies correctly and
older
versions of cabal-install might have some issues.  There's an
ongoing
initiative to have a set of more controlled packages, the Haskell
Platform.  It should soon has its first release.

That said, you shouldn't need to upgrade anything if you want
to build
ghc 6.8.3 with 6.4.2.   Also, what version of
ghc does you distribution
provide?

 


Lib
Network.URI cannot be compiled because:
Network/CGI/Protocol.hs:41:0:
 Failed to load interface for `Network.URI':
  Perhaps you haven't installed the profiling libraries
for package
network-2.2.0.0?
  Use -v to see a list of the files searched for.
I remove this SUBDIRS from the Makefile, luckly, it works.
A few more hours
lost in my life.
3. When I `ghc -v`, there are lots of "hiding package xxx
to avoid conflict
with later version yyy", do I have a way to remove these
hiding packages?
And "package xx will be ignored due to missing or
recursive dependencies:
yy", what does this mean? If it is ignored, my program
using it compiled and
run well. If the dependencies are not right, how can I fix
it? I installed
this by cabal. It reports nothing wrong and cannot check
if all packages
dependencies are OK.
4. When `cabal upgrade`, I do not think it knows what it
is doing. There
were many times that I cannot upgrade because I should
manually reinstall
some packages to make it work (Some guy say that this is
because ghc cannot
know the difference between two lib files with the same
name). And, cabal
does not upgrade all packages, I do not know why.
   



The issue is binary compatibility.  At the moment, GHC cannot make
sure that a library compiled with an older GHC can work with a
newer
GHC.  GHC does many cross-module optimisations, and its
runtime system
changes occasionally, so it is very pessimistic in that
regard.  This
becomes an issue for packages that GHC has been build with itself
(like base, process, array), since these cannot be upgraded
without
recompiling GHC (hence requiring recompiling every other package).
Older versions of cabal-install could not deal with this
correctly.
So in short, "cabal upgrade" (without arguments) is probably
not very
safe, atm.

There are ongoing efforts to provide more ABI compatibility
guarantees, but that requires solving of some difficult issues, so
we're not there yet.

Re: [Haskell-cafe] I do not want to be a bitch, but ghc-6.8.3 and haskell binary policy are really horrible.

[John Van Enk]

Could you, perhaps, outline a little more of what you're trying to do? I'm
having a hard time seeing what exactly you're doing, and why you can't use
the package provided by your distribution.
We'd love to help you, but you're not being very clear with what your
problem is.

/jve


On Tue, Oct 14, 2008 at 9:25 PM, Magicloud
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>wrote:

> Thank you for your reply.
> So the main information I got is that cabal is not safe. And my problems
> are all related to cabal, I think, dependency, ABI version
> I hope everything could be better soon. At least, tools should not block
> the way of producing.
>
>
> Thomas Schilling wrote:
>
>> 2008/10/14 Magicloud <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
>>
>>
>>> Sorry, let me say it this way:
>>> 1. Ghc cannot be bootstrap-installed. And the ghc-6.8.3 binary from
>>> official
>>> website also cannot run in my box, some kind of overflow error. So I have
>>> to
>>> look for help, a few hours later, I found 6.4.2 (I am not sure) which
>>> runs
>>> well in my box, and install ghc-6.8.3 indirectly.
>>>
>>>
>>
>> Hm, the only issue with binary installers I had were old versions of
>> some libraries which could be resolved by adding a few symlinks.  What
>> system are you on?
>>
>>
>>
>>> 2. After `cabal update && cabal upgrade`, ghc-6.8.3 cannot be built.
>>>
>>>
>>
>> Which version of cabal-install ( cabal --version ) are you using?
>> Note that 'cabal upgrade' is not guaranteed to work since libraries on
>> hackage don't always specify their dependencies correctly and older
>> versions of cabal-install might have some issues.  There's an ongoing
>> initiative to have a set of more controlled packages, the Haskell
>> Platform.  It should soon has its first release.
>>
>> That said, you shouldn't need to upgrade anything if you want to build
>> ghc 6.8.3 with 6.4.2.  Also, what version of ghc does you distribution
>> provide?
>>
>>
>>
>>> Lib
>>> Network.URI cannot be compiled because:
>>> Network/CGI/Protocol.hs:41:0:
>>>  Failed to load interface for `Network.URI':
>>>   Perhaps you haven't installed the profiling libraries for package
>>> network-2.2.0.0?
>>>   Use -v to see a list of the files searched for.
>>> I remove this SUBDIRS from the Makefile, luckly, it works. A few more
>>> hours
>>> lost in my life.
>>> 3. When I `ghc -v`, there are lots of "hiding package xxx to avoid
>>> conflict
>>> with later version yyy", do I have a way to remove these hiding packages?
>>> And "package xx will be ignored due to missing or recursive dependencies:
>>> yy", what does this mean? If it is ignored, my program using it compiled
>>> and
>>> run well. If the dependencies are not right, how can I fix it? I
>>> installed
>>> this by cabal. It reports nothing wrong and cannot check if all packages
>>> dependencies are OK.
>>> 4. When `cabal upgrade`, I do not think it knows what it is doing. There
>>> were many times that I cannot upgrade because I should manually reinstall
>>> some packages to make it work (Some guy say that this is because ghc
>>> cannot
>>> know the difference between two lib files with the same name). And, cabal
>>> does not upgrade all packages, I do not know why.
>>>
>>>
>>
>> The issue is binary compatibility.  At the moment, GHC cannot make
>> sure that a library compiled with an older GHC can work with a newer
>> GHC.  GHC does many cross-module optimisations, and its runtime system
>> changes occasionally, so it is very pessimistic in that regard.  This
>> becomes an issue for packages that GHC has been build with itself
>> (like base, process, array), since these cannot be upgraded without
>> recompiling GHC (hence requiring recompiling every other package).
>> Older versions of cabal-install could not deal with this correctly.
>> So in short, "cabal upgrade" (without arguments) is probably not very
>> safe, atm.
>>
>> There are ongoing efforts to provide more ABI compatibility
>> guarantees, but that requires solving of some difficult issues, so
>> we're not there yet.
>>
>> There are certainly some things that could be improved.  For example
>> GHC 6.10 won't let you unregister a package that other packages depend
>> on and it keeps checksums of the ABI which may be used by future
>> versions of Cabal/cabal-install.
>>
>>
>>
>>> 5. Sometimes when I upgrade some libraries, ghc failed to compile,
>>> because
>>> ld failed to find the new libraries. (Which proves that ghc cannot deal
>>> with
>>> binary files right). I need to recompile this, and recompile that, MAYBE
>>> it
>>> would be resolved.
>>>
>>>
>>
>> Without further details I can just guess, but I think this is related
>> to the problems with binary compatibility above.
>>
>>
>>
>>> Everyday, I spend a few hours on compiling. Does it really need to be so
>>> terrible? With erlang or ruby, I never spend more time debugging as
>>> haskell's feature says but less time on how to run my code.
>>>
>>>
>>
>> Many projects can just be loaded via ghci which is a lot faster.  Just
>> cd to the toplevel sour

Re: [Haskell-cafe] I do not want to be a bitch, but ghc-6.8.3 and haskell binary policy are really horrible.

[Magicloud]

Thank you for your reply.
So the main information I got is that cabal is not safe. And my problems 
are all related to cabal, I think, dependency, ABI version
I hope everything could be better soon. At least, tools should not block 
the way of producing.


Thomas Schilling wrote:

2008/10/14 Magicloud <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
  

Sorry, let me say it this way:
1. Ghc cannot be bootstrap-installed. And the ghc-6.8.3 binary from official
website also cannot run in my box, some kind of overflow error. So I have to
look for help, a few hours later, I found 6.4.2 (I am not sure) which runs
well in my box, and install ghc-6.8.3 indirectly.



Hm, the only issue with binary installers I had were old versions of
some libraries which could be resolved by adding a few symlinks.  What
system are you on?

  

2. After `cabal update && cabal upgrade`, ghc-6.8.3 cannot be built.



Which version of cabal-install ( cabal --version ) are you using?
Note that 'cabal upgrade' is not guaranteed to work since libraries on
hackage don't always specify their dependencies correctly and older
versions of cabal-install might have some issues.  There's an ongoing
initiative to have a set of more controlled packages, the Haskell
Platform.  It should soon has its first release.

That said, you shouldn't need to upgrade anything if you want to build
ghc 6.8.3 with 6.4.2.  Also, what version of ghc does you distribution
provide?

  

Lib
Network.URI cannot be compiled because:
Network/CGI/Protocol.hs:41:0:
 Failed to load interface for `Network.URI':
   Perhaps you haven't installed the profiling libraries for package
network-2.2.0.0?
   Use -v to see a list of the files searched for.
I remove this SUBDIRS from the Makefile, luckly, it works. A few more hours
lost in my life.
3. When I `ghc -v`, there are lots of "hiding package xxx to avoid conflict
with later version yyy", do I have a way to remove these hiding packages?
And "package xx will be ignored due to missing or recursive dependencies:
yy", what does this mean? If it is ignored, my program using it compiled and
run well. If the dependencies are not right, how can I fix it? I installed
this by cabal. It reports nothing wrong and cannot check if all packages
dependencies are OK.
4. When `cabal upgrade`, I do not think it knows what it is doing. There
were many times that I cannot upgrade because I should manually reinstall
some packages to make it work (Some guy say that this is because ghc cannot
know the difference between two lib files with the same name). And, cabal
does not upgrade all packages, I do not know why.



The issue is binary compatibility.  At the moment, GHC cannot make
sure that a library compiled with an older GHC can work with a newer
GHC.  GHC does many cross-module optimisations, and its runtime system
changes occasionally, so it is very pessimistic in that regard.  This
becomes an issue for packages that GHC has been build with itself
(like base, process, array), since these cannot be upgraded without
recompiling GHC (hence requiring recompiling every other package).
Older versions of cabal-install could not deal with this correctly.
So in short, "cabal upgrade" (without arguments) is probably not very
safe, atm.

There are ongoing efforts to provide more ABI compatibility
guarantees, but that requires solving of some difficult issues, so
we're not there yet.

There are certainly some things that could be improved.  For example
GHC 6.10 won't let you unregister a package that other packages depend
on and it keeps checksums of the ABI which may be used by future
versions of Cabal/cabal-install.

  

5. Sometimes when I upgrade some libraries, ghc failed to compile, because
ld failed to find the new libraries. (Which proves that ghc cannot deal with
binary files right). I need to recompile this, and recompile that, MAYBE it
would be resolved.



Without further details I can just guess, but I think this is related
to the problems with binary compatibility above.

  

Everyday, I spend a few hours on compiling. Does it really need to be so
terrible? With erlang or ruby, I never spend more time debugging as
haskell's feature says but less time on how to run my code.



Many projects can just be loaded via ghci which is a lot faster.  Just
cd to the toplevel source directory, type :l ModuleName.  Then edit
the source code, and type :r to reload the current module.

With many of these smaller issues you can often find quick help on
Haskell's IRC channel #haskell or #ghc if you have problems specific
to GHC (although asking at #haskell will often give you an answer more
quickly, so ask there first anyway)

HTH,

 Thomas


  

Thomas Schilling wrote:


It would be helpful if you could describe exactly what you did so we
can work on improving the issue in the long term (and help you fix it
in the short term).

2008/10/14 Magicloud <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:

  

1. I cannot install ghc-6.8.3 in my box until I found the old runable
binary.
2

Re: [Haskell-cafe] I do not want to be a bitch, but ghc-6.8.3 and haskell binary policy are really horrible.

[Thomas Schilling]

2008/10/14 Magicloud <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> Sorry, let me say it this way:
> 1. Ghc cannot be bootstrap-installed. And the ghc-6.8.3 binary from official
> website also cannot run in my box, some kind of overflow error. So I have to
> look for help, a few hours later, I found 6.4.2 (I am not sure) which runs
> well in my box, and install ghc-6.8.3 indirectly.

Hm, the only issue with binary installers I had were old versions of
some libraries which could be resolved by adding a few symlinks.  What
system are you on?

> 2. After `cabal update && cabal upgrade`, ghc-6.8.3 cannot be built.

Which version of cabal-install ( cabal --version ) are you using?
Note that 'cabal upgrade' is not guaranteed to work since libraries on
hackage don't always specify their dependencies correctly and older
versions of cabal-install might have some issues.  There's an ongoing
initiative to have a set of more controlled packages, the Haskell
Platform.  It should soon has its first release.

That said, you shouldn't need to upgrade anything if you want to build
ghc 6.8.3 with 6.4.2.  Also, what version of ghc does you distribution
provide?

> Lib
> Network.URI cannot be compiled because:
> Network/CGI/Protocol.hs:41:0:
>  Failed to load interface for `Network.URI':
>Perhaps you haven't installed the profiling libraries for package
> network-2.2.0.0?
>Use -v to see a list of the files searched for.
> I remove this SUBDIRS from the Makefile, luckly, it works. A few more hours
> lost in my life.
> 3. When I `ghc -v`, there are lots of "hiding package xxx to avoid conflict
> with later version yyy", do I have a way to remove these hiding packages?
> And "package xx will be ignored due to missing or recursive dependencies:
> yy", what does this mean? If it is ignored, my program using it compiled and
> run well. If the dependencies are not right, how can I fix it? I installed
> this by cabal. It reports nothing wrong and cannot check if all packages
> dependencies are OK.
> 4. When `cabal upgrade`, I do not think it knows what it is doing. There
> were many times that I cannot upgrade because I should manually reinstall
> some packages to make it work (Some guy say that this is because ghc cannot
> know the difference between two lib files with the same name). And, cabal
> does not upgrade all packages, I do not know why.

The issue is binary compatibility.  At the moment, GHC cannot make
sure that a library compiled with an older GHC can work with a newer
GHC.  GHC does many cross-module optimisations, and its runtime system
changes occasionally, so it is very pessimistic in that regard.  This
becomes an issue for packages that GHC has been build with itself
(like base, process, array), since these cannot be upgraded without
recompiling GHC (hence requiring recompiling every other package).
Older versions of cabal-install could not deal with this correctly.
So in short, "cabal upgrade" (without arguments) is probably not very
safe, atm.

There are ongoing efforts to provide more ABI compatibility
guarantees, but that requires solving of some difficult issues, so
we're not there yet.

There are certainly some things that could be improved.  For example
GHC 6.10 won't let you unregister a package that other packages depend
on and it keeps checksums of the ABI which may be used by future
versions of Cabal/cabal-install.

> 5. Sometimes when I upgrade some libraries, ghc failed to compile, because
> ld failed to find the new libraries. (Which proves that ghc cannot deal with
> binary files right). I need to recompile this, and recompile that, MAYBE it
> would be resolved.

Without further details I can just guess, but I think this is related
to the problems with binary compatibility above.

>
> Everyday, I spend a few hours on compiling. Does it really need to be so
> terrible? With erlang or ruby, I never spend more time debugging as
> haskell's feature says but less time on how to run my code.

Many projects can just be loaded via ghci which is a lot faster.  Just
cd to the toplevel source directory, type :l ModuleName.  Then edit
the source code, and type :r to reload the current module.

With many of these smaller issues you can often find quick help on
Haskell's IRC channel #haskell or #ghc if you have problems specific
to GHC (although asking at #haskell will often give you an answer more
quickly, so ask there first anyway)

HTH,

 Thomas


>
> Thomas Schilling wrote:
>>
>> It would be helpful if you could describe exactly what you did so we
>> can work on improving the issue in the long term (and help you fix it
>> in the short term).
>>
>> 2008/10/14 Magicloud <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
>>
>>>
>>> 1. I cannot install ghc-6.8.3 in my box until I found the old runable
>>> binary.
>>> 2. After I installed cabal, and upgraded, ghc-6.8.3 cannot rebuild
>>> itself.
>>> Because its libraries are conflict with the ones upgraded by cabal.
>>> 3. Sometimes, ghc just ignore some libs, because it does not meet its
>>> dependencies. Well

Re: [Haskell-cafe] I do not want to be a bitch, but ghc-6.8.3 and haskell binary policy are really horrible.

[Magicloud]

Sorry, let me say it this way:
1. Ghc cannot be bootstrap-installed. And the ghc-6.8.3 binary from 
official website also cannot run in my box, some kind of overflow error. 
So I have to look for help, a few hours later, I found 6.4.2 (I am not 
sure) which runs well in my box, and install ghc-6.8.3 indirectly.
2. After `cabal update && cabal upgrade`, ghc-6.8.3 cannot be built. Lib 
Network.URI cannot be compiled because:

Network/CGI/Protocol.hs:41:0:
  Failed to load interface for `Network.URI':
Perhaps you haven't installed the profiling libraries for package 
network-2.2.0.0?

Use -v to see a list of the files searched for.
I remove this SUBDIRS from the Makefile, luckly, it works. A few more 
hours lost in my life.
3. When I `ghc -v`, there are lots of "hiding package xxx to avoid 
conflict with later version yyy", do I have a way to remove these hiding 
packages? And "package xx will be ignored due to missing or recursive 
dependencies: yy", what does this mean? If it is ignored, my program 
using it compiled and run well. If the dependencies are not right, how 
can I fix it? I installed this by cabal. It reports nothing wrong and 
cannot check if all packages dependencies are OK.
4. When `cabal upgrade`, I do not think it knows what it is doing. There 
were many times that I cannot upgrade because I should manually 
reinstall some packages to make it work (Some guy say that this is 
because ghc cannot know the difference between two lib files with the 
same name). And, cabal does not upgrade all packages, I do not know why.
5. Sometimes when I upgrade some libraries, ghc failed to compile, 
because ld failed to find the new libraries. (Which proves that ghc 
cannot deal with binary files right). I need to recompile this, and 
recompile that, MAYBE it would be resolved.


Everyday, I spend a few hours on compiling. Does it really need to be so 
terrible? With erlang or ruby, I never spend more time debugging as 
haskell's feature says but less time on how to run my code.


Thomas Schilling wrote:

It would be helpful if you could describe exactly what you did so we
can work on improving the issue in the long term (and help you fix it
in the short term).

2008/10/14 Magicloud <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
  

1. I cannot install ghc-6.8.3 in my box until I found the old runable
binary.
2. After I installed cabal, and upgraded, ghc-6.8.3 cannot rebuild itself.
Because its libraries are conflict with the ones upgraded by cabal.
3. Sometimes, ghc just ignore some libs, because it does not meet its
dependencies. Well, ghc does not even tell me. It knows what I want?
4. I use cabal, thinking it would make dependencies installation easier for
me. Well it does not, once an error happened, nothing would work since. I
cannot even remove the broken lib.
5. No more needed. The above ones, which are important enough to drive me
crazy.
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Re: [Haskell-cafe] I do not want to be a bitch, but ghc-6.8.3 and haskell binary policy are really horrible.

[Thomas Schilling]

It would be helpful if you could describe exactly what you did so we
can work on improving the issue in the long term (and help you fix it
in the short term).

2008/10/14 Magicloud <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> 1. I cannot install ghc-6.8.3 in my box until I found the old runable
> binary.
> 2. After I installed cabal, and upgraded, ghc-6.8.3 cannot rebuild itself.
> Because its libraries are conflict with the ones upgraded by cabal.
> 3. Sometimes, ghc just ignore some libs, because it does not meet its
> dependencies. Well, ghc does not even tell me. It knows what I want?
> 4. I use cabal, thinking it would make dependencies installation easier for
> me. Well it does not, once an error happened, nothing would work since. I
> cannot even remove the broken lib.
> 5. No more needed. The above ones, which are important enough to drive me
> crazy.
> ___
> Haskell-Cafe mailing list
> Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org
> http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
>
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[Haskell-cafe] I do not want to be a bitch, but ghc-6.8.3 and haskell binary policy are really horrible.

[Magicloud]

1. I cannot install ghc-6.8.3 in my box until I found the old runable 
binary.
2. After I installed cabal, and upgraded, ghc-6.8.3 cannot rebuild 
itself. Because its libraries are conflict with the ones upgraded by cabal.
3. Sometimes, ghc just ignore some libs, because it does not meet its 
dependencies. Well, ghc does not even tell me. It knows what I want?
4. I use cabal, thinking it would make dependencies installation easier 
for me. Well it does not, once an error happened, nothing would work 
since. I cannot even remove the broken lib.
5. No more needed. The above ones, which are important enough to drive 
me crazy.

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