Re: How to install GhC on a Mac without registering?

2011-06-14 Thread malcolm.wallace
For use at high school level, I would imagine that you would want to build a special distribution anyway.  One that for example already includes packages, such as Gloss, that would be useful in teaching children programming in Haskell without they having to go through learning to use cabal (which is a bigger hurdle than installing Xcode IMHO).

But I wonder, would those students not use school equipment (which supposedly would have all software pre-installed)?  Do they bring their own Macs?  (I'd be surprised to find a whole class of 6th graders all owning Macs...)As a further data point, yesterday one of my colleagues gave his 17-yr-old daughter a copy of the "Learn you a Haskell for Great Good" book. She started to read it, and wanted to play with Haskell on her MacBook Air. First step, download ghc. Discover that it will not install on Leopard. Step two: upgrade the operating system to Snow Leopard. One hour later, attempt to install ghc again. Discover that it requires XCode. Step three: buy XCode from the mac App Store, and wait two hours for the 4Gb download over a hotel wifi connection Step four: hotel wifi access runs out before the download is complete, so give up and go back to watching the movie she downloaded earlier, but has not been able to watch whilst all this downloading and upgrading has been happening.A happy customer?Regards, Malcolm___
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Re: How to install GhC on a Mac without registering?

2011-06-14 Thread Manuel M T Chakravarty
malcolm.wallace:
 For use at high school level, I would imagine that you would want to build a 
 special distribution anyway. One that for example already includes packages, 
 such as Gloss, that would be useful in teaching children programming in 
 Haskell without they having to go through learning to use cabal (which is a 
 bigger hurdle than installing Xcode IMHO).
 
 But I wonder, would those students not use school equipment (which 
 supposedly would have all software pre-installed)? Do they bring their own 
 Macs? (I'd be surprised to find a whole class of 6th graders all owning 
 Macs...)
  
 
 As a further data point, yesterday one of my colleagues gave his 17-yr-old 
 daughter a copy of the Learn you a Haskell for Great Good book.  She 
 started to read it, and wanted to play with Haskell on her MacBook Air.  
 First step, download ghc.  Discover that it will not install on Leopard.  
 Step two: upgrade the operating system to Snow Leopard.  One hour later, 
 attempt to install ghc again.  Discover that it requires XCode.  Step three: 
 buy XCode from the mac App Store, and wait two hours for the 4Gb download 
 over a hotel wifi connection  Step four: hotel wifi access runs out before 
 the download is complete, so give up and go back to watching the movie she 
 downloaded earlier, but has not been able to watch whilst all this 
 downloading and upgrading has been happening.

That is a nice story, but it doesn't change what I wrote earlier:

* It would be nice to have a lightweight Haskell learner's distro (for your 
colleagues 17-yr-old daughter and others), preferably with libraries like a web 
framework, Gloss, etc included — an all in one package.

* The standard, production-ready Haskell distro shouldn't duplicate tools 
already provided by the platform vendor, especially not C compiler and 
libraries that quickly lead to subtly hard to find bugs in projects that use 
these tools also directly (and not just via GHC).

Manuel


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Re: How to install GhC on a Mac without registering?

2011-06-14 Thread Donn Cave
Following up on the notion that Hugs might suit the casual introductory
user better - I see that while you can find it online as a pre-built
package, you're normally advised (haskell.org, Kent CS dept, etc.) to
build it via MacPorts - which requires Xcode.

I mention this because if anyone is seriously thinking about adding an
optional gcc package to the GHC Mac platform, it might be worthwhile
to find out why MacPorts doesn't do that.

But if anyone from the Hugs98 scene is listening - might think about
making a pre-built package a more visible option, if Xcode is as
onerous as we're led to believe.

Donn Cave

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Re: How to install GhC on a Mac without registering?

2011-06-13 Thread Manuel M T Chakravarty
Malcolm Wallace:
 On 10 Jun 2011, at 02:15, Manuel M T Chakravarty wrote:
 
 Anybody who is halfway serious about developing software on a Mac will have 
 Xcode installed anyway.
 
 As the original poster clarified, the motivating use-case is education 
 (specifically a class of 12-13 year olds.)  These are not serious 
 developers, but they have the potential to become serious.  Placing 
 unnecessary hurdles in their way will diminish the chances of their 
 discovering Haskell to be a beautiful language.

For use at high school level, I would imagine that you would want to build a 
special distribution anyway.  One that for example already includes packages, 
such as Gloss, that would be useful in teaching children programming in Haskell 
without they having to go through learning to use cabal (which is a bigger 
hurdle than installing Xcode IMHO).

But I wonder, would those students not use school equipment (which supposedly 
would have all software pre-installed)?  Do they bring their own Macs?  (I'd be 
surprised to find a whole class of 6th graders all owning Macs...)

 Having said that, I do think that Hugs (or maybe Helium) would be a more 
 appropriate environment for teaching the basics to young students.

That or a customised version of GHC with the right libraries pre-installed etc, 
and editor included, etc.

Manuel


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Re: How to install GhC on a Mac without registering?

2011-06-12 Thread Malcolm Wallace

On 10 Jun 2011, at 02:15, Manuel M T Chakravarty wrote:

 Anybody who is halfway serious about developing software on a Mac will have 
 Xcode installed anyway.

As the original poster clarified, the motivating use-case is education 
(specifically a class of 12-13 year olds.)  These are not serious developers, 
but they have the potential to become serious.  Placing unnecessary hurdles in 
their way will diminish the chances of their discovering Haskell to be a 
beautiful language.

Having said that, I do think that Hugs (or maybe Helium) would be a more 
appropriate environment for teaching the basics to young students.

Regards,
Malcolm


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Re: How to install GhC on a Mac without registering?

2011-06-10 Thread Sean Leather
On Fri, Jun 10, 2011 at 03:15, Manuel M T Chakravarty wrote:

 Ian Lynagh:
  On Mon, Jun 06, 2011 at 03:47:57PM +0100, Malcolm Wallace wrote:
  On 6 Jun 2011, at 13:49, Lyndon Maydwell wrote:
  I would be fantastic if XCode wasn't a dependency.  ...
 
  Not to detract at all from the work of the wonderful GHC and Haskell
  Platform contributors in any way. For me it would just make it that
  much easier to convince mac-using friends to give Haskell a try.
 
  The ghc team already bundle a copy of gcc in their Windows distribution,
 precisely because it can be fiddly to get a working copy of gcc for that
 platform otherwise.  I wonder if they would consider the possibility of
 shipping gcc on Mac too?  (There may be good reasons not to do that, but
 let's have the discussion.)
 
  I'm pretty sure we aren't allowed to redistribute XCode.
 
  As well as gcc and friends, I think XCode also includes various headers
  and/or libraries that we need.
 
  If there is an alternative - especially one that allows us to support
  multiple versions of OS X more easily - then using it may make sense.

 You are right, the Xcode install includes many tools as well as headers
 etc.

 What would be the advantage of including gcc and all these other things in
 GHC?


To simplify the process of installing GHC and to support people with
versions of Mac OS X older than the most current. We want to spread the
Haskell love as far as possible.


 Anybody who is halfway serious about developing software on a Mac will have
 Xcode installed anyway.


You could say the same about people halfway serious about developing
software on Windows. But GHC doesn't require you to install MinGW, Cygwin,
or Virtual Studio.


 Besides, as Xcode updates are now available from the Mac App Store,


Not for older versions of Mac OS X.


 you don't even need to register as a developer with Apple anymore — yes,
 you need to pay the nominal $5 for the 4GB download.  If you don't want to
 do that, install the (probably older) version of Xcode that came with the
 install DVDs of your Mac.


This doesn't solve the problem if the GHC package only supports later
versions of Xcode. There has already been at least one difference between
Xcode 3 and 4 ( http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/5011 ) that
caused a problem and there may be others in the future.


 I don't think you can compare this with the situation on Windows.
  Microsoft does not distribute a canonical set of Unix tools that all
 developers use.


No, but Cygwin and MinGW are available for free and have been around for a
long time. Why does GHC bundle MinGW instead of expecting the user to
install it herself? Convenience?

I think there is a clear benefit to supporting older versions of Mac OS X.
Not everybody upgrades at the same rate that Apple releases new versions.
Indeed, Apple's updates occasionally change architecture requirements or
break applications, so some people cannot upgrade.

Having a new package bundling GNU tools/libraries doesn't preclude the
current package using Xcode. The only good arguments against a new package,
that I can see, are the additional work to develop the packaging and the
testing, release, and maintenance efforts. Perhaps there are some
compatibility concerns, working with other OS X libraries/applications. Of
course, these are not at all insignificant issues, but these are the main
concerns.

Regards,
Sean
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Re: How to install GhC on a Mac without registering?

2011-06-10 Thread Manuel M T Chakravarty
Sean Leather:
 On Fri, Jun 10, 2011 at 03:15, Manuel M T Chakravarty wrote:
 Ian Lynagh:
  On Mon, Jun 06, 2011 at 03:47:57PM +0100, Malcolm Wallace wrote:
  On 6 Jun 2011, at 13:49, Lyndon Maydwell wrote:
  I would be fantastic if XCode wasn't a dependency.  ...
 
  Not to detract at all from the work of the wonderful GHC and Haskell
  Platform contributors in any way. For me it would just make it that
  much easier to convince mac-using friends to give Haskell a try.
 
  The ghc team already bundle a copy of gcc in their Windows distribution, 
  precisely because it can be fiddly to get a working copy of gcc for that 
  platform otherwise.  I wonder if they would consider the possibility of 
  shipping gcc on Mac too?  (There may be good reasons not to do that, but 
  let's have the discussion.)
 
  I'm pretty sure we aren't allowed to redistribute XCode.
 
  As well as gcc and friends, I think XCode also includes various headers
  and/or libraries that we need.
 
  If there is an alternative - especially one that allows us to support
  multiple versions of OS X more easily - then using it may make sense.
 
 You are right, the Xcode install includes many tools as well as headers etc.
 
 What would be the advantage of including gcc and all these other things in 
 GHC?
 
 To simplify the process of installing GHC and to support people with versions 
 of Mac OS X older than the most current. We want to spread the Haskell love 
 as far as possible.

The only simplification is that people who haven't got Xcode yet need to 
install two packages instead of just one.

However, for people who already have got Xcode installed, it means that they 
get two versions of all the dev tools, headers, etc.  Then, compiling a C file 
(eg, as part of a Haskell project) by directly invoking gcc or by compiling it 
via ghc will use different compilers, headers, etc.  That quickly leads to 
annoying and hard to debug problems.

Given that almost every developer on a Mac will be in the second group, you are 
not simplifying matters, you are complicating them.

 Anybody who is halfway serious about developing software on a Mac will have 
 Xcode installed anyway.
 
 You could say the same about people halfway serious about developing software 
 on Windows. But GHC doesn't require you to install MinGW, Cygwin, or Virtual 
 Studio.

No.  A serious Windows dev will have Visual Studio installed.  That won't help 
with installing GHC at all AND the GHC-bundled Unix tools do not interfere with 
Visual Studio in the same way that custom installs of Unix tools interfere with 
Xcode.

 Besides, as Xcode updates are now available from the Mac App Store,
 
 Not for older versions of Mac OS X.

Well, then get the DVDs bundled with your Mac and install Xcode from those, or 
sign up at developer.apple.com and get it there.   BTW, Mac users (and esp 
devs) upgrade very quickly, much faster than, say, Windows users.

 you don't even need to register as a developer with Apple anymore — yes, you 
 need to pay the nominal $5 for the 4GB download.  If you don't want to do 
 that, install the (probably older) version of Xcode that came with the 
 install DVDs of your Mac.
 
 This doesn't solve the problem if the GHC package only supports later 
 versions of Xcode. There has already been at least one difference between 
 Xcode 3 and 4 ( http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/5011 ) that caused 
 a problem and there may be others in the future.

That was arguably a bug in GHC's build setup.  It hardcoded a particular SDK 
version and died when Apple didn't ship that with the default install anymore.  
Nevertheless, new versions of Xcode will require adaptations in GHC, just like 
new gcc and GNU tool/lib versions require fixes in GHC on Linux.

Bundling doesn't solve that problem; it shifts it due to the mismatch of 
system-wide and GHC-installed compilers, tools, and libs.

 I don't think you can compare this with the situation on Windows.  Microsoft 
 does not distribute a canonical set of Unix tools that all developers use.
 
 No, but Cygwin and MinGW are available for free and have been around for a 
 long time. Why does GHC bundle MinGW instead of expecting the user to install 
 it herself? Convenience?

Again, this is a different situation.  Window's standard dev environment is 
Visual Studio, you cannot expect devs to have MinGW installed.  Mac OS X's 
standard dev environment is Xcode and you can expect devs to have that 
installed.

 I think there is a clear benefit to supporting older versions of Mac OS X. 
 Not everybody upgrades at the same rate that Apple releases new versions. 
 Indeed, Apple's updates occasionally change architecture requirements or 
 break applications, so some people cannot upgrade.

Most people upgrade quickly on the Mac platform and, anyway, it does not matter 
if they have Xcode already installed, which is the case for the majority of 
devs.  In fact, that majority is inconvenienced by the additional complexity 

Re: How to install GhC on a Mac without registering?

2011-06-10 Thread Lars Viklund
On Fri, Jun 10, 2011 at 09:24:41PM +1000, Manuel M T Chakravarty wrote:
 Sean Leather:
  On Fri, Jun 10, 2011 at 03:15, Manuel M T Chakravarty wrote:
  Ian Lynagh:
   On Mon, Jun 06, 2011 at 03:47:57PM +0100, Malcolm Wallace wrote:
   On 6 Jun 2011, at 13:49, Lyndon Maydwell wrote:
   I would be fantastic if XCode wasn't a dependency.  ...
  
   Not to detract at all from the work of the wonderful GHC and Haskell
   Platform contributors in any way. For me it would just make it that
   much easier to convince mac-using friends to give Haskell a try.
  
   The ghc team already bundle a copy of gcc in their Windows distribution, 
   precisely because it can be fiddly to get a working copy of gcc for that 
   platform otherwise.  I wonder if they would consider the possibility of 
   shipping gcc on Mac too?  (There may be good reasons not to do that, but 
   let's have the discussion.)
  
   I'm pretty sure we aren't allowed to redistribute XCode.
  
   As well as gcc and friends, I think XCode also includes various headers
   and/or libraries that we need.
  
   If there is an alternative - especially one that allows us to support
   multiple versions of OS X more easily - then using it may make sense.
  
  You are right, the Xcode install includes many tools as well as headers etc.
  
  What would be the advantage of including gcc and all these other things in 
  GHC?
  
  To simplify the process of installing GHC and to support people with 
  versions of Mac OS X older than the most current. We want to spread the 
  Haskell love as far as possible.
 
 The only simplification is that people who haven't got Xcode yet need to 
 install two packages instead of just one.
 
 However, for people who already have got Xcode installed, it means that they 
 get two versions of all the dev tools, headers, etc.  Then, compiling a C 
 file (eg, as part of a Haskell project) by directly invoking gcc or by 
 compiling it via ghc will use different compilers, headers, etc.  That 
 quickly leads to annoying and hard to debug problems.
 
 Given that almost every developer on a Mac will be in the second group, you 
 are not simplifying matters, you are complicating them.
 
  Anybody who is halfway serious about developing software on a Mac will have 
  Xcode installed anyway.
  
  You could say the same about people halfway serious about developing 
  software on Windows. But GHC doesn't require you to install MinGW, Cygwin, 
  or Virtual Studio.
 
 No.  A serious Windows dev will have Visual Studio installed.  That won't 
 help with installing GHC at all AND the GHC-bundled Unix tools do not 
 interfere with Visual Studio in the same way that custom installs of Unix 
 tools interfere with Xcode.
 
  Besides, as Xcode updates are now available from the Mac App Store,
  
  Not for older versions of Mac OS X.
 
 Well, then get the DVDs bundled with your Mac and install Xcode from those, 
 or sign up at developer.apple.com and get it there.   BTW, Mac users (and esp 
 devs) upgrade very quickly, much faster than, say, Windows users.

I disagree with the assumption that OS X people are quick to upgrade.
The last set of figures I saw on adoption were something along the lines
of 15% on 10.6, with almost a third of the users on 10.4 and below,
taken from some article I read the other week on the rising wave of OS X
viruses and countermeasures.

  I don't think you can compare this with the situation on Windows.  
  Microsoft does not distribute a canonical set of Unix tools that all 
  developers use.
  
  No, but Cygwin and MinGW are available for free and have been around for a 
  long time. Why does GHC bundle MinGW instead of expecting the user to 
  install it herself? Convenience?
 
 Again, this is a different situation.  Window's standard dev environment is 
 Visual Studio, you cannot expect devs to have MinGW installed.  Mac OS X's 
 standard dev environment is Xcode and you can expect devs to have that 
 installed.

On Windows, it's rather hard to collect the environment needed to build
libraries compatible with a particular GHC, let alone build a GHC from
scratch. The dev-wiki page on how to set up a build environment is huge,
referencing ancient tools that are rather bothersome to find.

Any typicall installed mingw/msys you might find on developer machines
will most probably not be similar enough to be usable.

  I think there is a clear benefit to supporting older versions of Mac OS X. 
  Not everybody upgrades at the same rate that Apple releases new versions. 
  Indeed, Apple's updates occasionally change architecture requirements or 
  break applications, so some people cannot upgrade.
 
 Most people upgrade quickly on the Mac platform and, anyway, it does not 
 matter if they have Xcode already installed, which is the case for the 
 majority of devs.  In fact, that majority is inconvenienced by the additional 
 complexity of different versions of the tools and libraries.

Do you have any source for your statement 

Re: How to install GhC on a Mac without registering?

2011-06-10 Thread Lars Viklund
On Fri, Jun 10, 2011 at 01:53:13PM +0200, Lars Viklund wrote:
 a lot of stuff...

Sorry for the over-quoting in my previous message, I didn't notice that
my editor was scrolled down.

-- 
Lars Viklund | z...@acc.umu.se

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Re: How to install GhC on a Mac without registering?

2011-06-10 Thread Benedict Eastaugh
On 10 June 2011 12:53, Lars Viklund z...@acc.umu.se wrote:
 I disagree with the assumption that OS X people are quick to upgrade.
 The last set of figures I saw on adoption were something along the lines
 of 15% on 10.6, with almost a third of the users on 10.4 and below,
 taken from some article I read the other week on the rising wave of OS X
 viruses and countermeasures.

It would be nice to see the source for those figures.

However, assuming that they are correct, presumably they are for all
Mac OS X users, not specifically for developers. It doesn't seem
unreasonable to suppose that developers might have quite different
upgrading habits to the general population of OS X users.

Cheers,
Benedict

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Re: How to install GhC on a Mac without registering?

2011-06-10 Thread Donn Cave
Quoth Manuel M T Chakravarty c...@cse.unsw.edu.au,
 Sean Leather:
...
 To simplify the process of installing GHC and to support people
 with versions of Mac OS X older than the most current. We want to
 spread the Haskell love as far as possible.

 The only simplification is that people who haven't got Xcode yet
 need to install two packages instead of just one.

 However, for people who already have got Xcode installed, it means
 that they get two versions of all the dev tools, headers, etc.  Then,
 compiling a C file (eg, as part of a Haskell project) by directly
 invoking gcc or by compiling it via ghc will use different compilers,
 headers, etc.  That quickly leads to annoying and hard to debug problems.

 Given that almost every developer on a Mac will be in the second group,
 you are not simplifying matters, you are complicating them.

I would expect the reverse in many cases - initial install without
Xcode, followed by upgrade to Xcode.  Equally problematic, though.

As for numbers, it depends on how you define developer - installs
without Xcode might well be more numerous, and people with such
installs might be more numerous on the email lists etc., but in
terms of the platform per se, they're kind of dead weight.

Donn

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Re: How to install GhC on a Mac without registering?

2011-06-10 Thread Lars Viklund
On Fri, Jun 10, 2011 at 11:31:01PM +1000, Manuel M T Chakravarty wrote:
 Lars Viklund:
  On Fri, Jun 10, 2011 at 09:24:41PM +1000, Manuel M T Chakravarty wrote:
  Well, then get the DVDs bundled with your Mac and install Xcode from 
  those, or sign up at developer.apple.com and get it there.   BTW, Mac 
  users (and esp devs) upgrade very quickly, much faster than, say, Windows 
  users.
  
  I disagree with the assumption that OS X people are quick to upgrade.
  The last set of figures I saw on adoption were something along the lines
  of 15% on 10.6, with almost a third of the users on 10.4 and below,
  taken from some article I read the other week on the rising wave of OS X
  viruses and countermeasures.
 
 Those numbers sound completely wrong and I'd like to see a credible source 
 before I believe them.  As just one data point on Snow Leopard adoption, have 
 a look at
 
   http://daringfireball.net/2009/09/snow_leopard_adoption_rate
 
 I would say that readers of Daring Fireball are fairly tech savvy people with 
 an above average percentage of developers.  But consider this, 
 
   it took about five days for 10.6 to pass 10.5
 
 Five days from the release of the OS for 50% of the DF readers to upgrade to 
 Snow Leopard.

My browser history had it, with what I assume is a much better sample size than
the DF readers, and being much more current:
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/apples-mac-defender-update-allows-users-to-run-known-malware/13099

Re-visiting the URI, I notice that the low percentages I vaguely
recalled were total OS marketshare, not OS X alone.

Normalizing 10.6 v. 10.5 v. 10.4 yields this, which aligns with data
mentioned in the thread:
* 10.6 - 68.6%
* 10.5 - 24.4%
* 10.4 - 7.0%

That's a solid 30% or so not on current OS X.

I do have a problem with your developers are more up to date argument,
as everyone who wants to build any package with native bits needs a
toolchain installed. There's a fair amount of such packages on Hackage.

This counter-argument is of course void and null if there's popular sane
ways to deploy binary application bundles on OS X akin to Bamse, but to
my knowledge no such beast exists.

-- 
Lars Viklund | z...@acc.umu.se

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Re: How to install GhC on a Mac without registering?

2011-06-10 Thread Manuel M T Chakravarty
Lars Viklund:
 On Fri, Jun 10, 2011 at 09:24:41PM +1000, Manuel M T Chakravarty wrote:
 Well, then get the DVDs bundled with your Mac and install Xcode from those, 
 or sign up at developer.apple.com and get it there.   BTW, Mac users (and 
 esp devs) upgrade very quickly, much faster than, say, Windows users.
 
 I disagree with the assumption that OS X people are quick to upgrade.
 The last set of figures I saw on adoption were something along the lines
 of 15% on 10.6, with almost a third of the users on 10.4 and below,
 taken from some article I read the other week on the rising wave of OS X
 viruses and countermeasures.

Those numbers sound completely wrong and I'd like to see a credible source 
before I believe them.  As just one data point on Snow Leopard adoption, have a 
look at

 http://daringfireball.net/2009/09/snow_leopard_adoption_rate

I would say that readers of Daring Fireball are fairly tech savvy people with 
an above average percentage of developers.  But consider this, 

 it took about five days for 10.6 to pass 10.5

Five days from the release of the OS for 50% of the DF readers to upgrade to 
Snow Leopard.

Manuel


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Re: How to install GhC on a Mac without registering?

2011-06-09 Thread Manuel M T Chakravarty
[Ian, sorry for the duplicate — wrong sender email at first.]

Ian Lynagh:
 On Mon, Jun 06, 2011 at 03:47:57PM +0100, Malcolm Wallace wrote:
 
 On 6 Jun 2011, at 13:49, Lyndon Maydwell wrote:
 
 I would be fantastic if XCode wasn't a dependency.  ...
 
 Not to detract at all from the work of the wonderful GHC and Haskell
 Platform contributors in any way. For me it would just make it that
 much easier to convince mac-using friends to give Haskell a try.
 
 The ghc team already bundle a copy of gcc in their Windows distribution, 
 precisely because it can be fiddly to get a working copy of gcc for that 
 platform otherwise.  I wonder if they would consider the possibility of 
 shipping gcc on Mac too?  (There may be good reasons not to do that, but 
 let's have the discussion.)
 
 I'm pretty sure we aren't allowed to redistribute XCode.
 
 As well as gcc and friends, I think XCode also includes various headers
 and/or libraries that we need.
 
 If there is an alternative - especially one that allows us to support
 multiple versions of OS X more easily - then using it may make sense.

You are right, the Xcode install includes many tools as well as headers etc.

What would be the advantage of including gcc and all these other things in GHC? 
 Anybody who is halfway serious about developing software on a Mac will have 
Xcode installed anyway.  Besides, as Xcode updates are now available from the 
Mac App Store, you don't even need to register as a developer with Apple 
anymore — yes, you need to pay the nominal $5 for the 4GB download.  If you 
don't want to do that, install the (probably older) version of Xcode that came 
with the install DVDs of your Mac.

I don't think you can compare this with the situation on Windows.  Microsoft 
does not distribute a canonical set of Unix tools that all developers use.

Manuel


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Re: How to install GhC on a Mac without registering?

2011-06-06 Thread Malcolm Wallace

On 6 Jun 2011, at 13:49, Lyndon Maydwell wrote:

 I would be fantastic if XCode wasn't a dependency.  ...
 
 Not to detract at all from the work of the wonderful GHC and Haskell
 Platform contributors in any way. For me it would just make it that
 much easier to convince mac-using friends to give Haskell a try.

The ghc team already bundle a copy of gcc in their Windows distribution, 
precisely because it can be fiddly to get a working copy of gcc for that 
platform otherwise.  I wonder if they would consider the possibility of 
shipping gcc on Mac too?  (There may be good reasons not to do that, but let's 
have the discussion.)

Regards,
Malcolm

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Re: [Haskell-cafe] How to install GhC on a Mac without registering?

2011-06-06 Thread Daniel Peebles
Isn't gcc just used for its assembler and object file creation, these days,
now that via-C is deprecated? Or are there other parts of it that are
needed?

On Mon, Jun 6, 2011 at 10:47 AM, Malcolm Wallace malcolm.wall...@me.comwrote:


 On 6 Jun 2011, at 13:49, Lyndon Maydwell wrote:

  I would be fantastic if XCode wasn't a dependency.  ...
 
  Not to detract at all from the work of the wonderful GHC and Haskell
  Platform contributors in any way. For me it would just make it that
  much easier to convince mac-using friends to give Haskell a try.

 The ghc team already bundle a copy of gcc in their Windows distribution,
 precisely because it can be fiddly to get a working copy of gcc for that
 platform otherwise.  I wonder if they would consider the possibility of
 shipping gcc on Mac too?  (There may be good reasons not to do that, but
 let's have the discussion.)

 Regards,
 Malcolm

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Re: [Haskell-cafe] How to install GhC on a Mac without registering?

2011-06-06 Thread Simon Marlow

On 06/06/11 15:57, Daniel Peebles wrote:

Isn't gcc just used for its assembler and object file creation, these
days, now that via-C is deprecated? Or are there other parts of it that
are needed?


The C compiler is needed to support foreign export and foreign import 
wrapper, and we also generate C fragments for some initialisation code 
now (in 7.2.1) as part of some changes I made to the way module 
initialisation is done.  The C compiler is also used to support 
-rtsopts, which requires compiling a small C file and linking it into 
the binary.


It's sometimes handy to be able to compile C files with GHC, if you're 
not using Cabal.


Cheers,
Simon



On Mon, Jun 6, 2011 at 10:47 AM, Malcolm Wallace malcolm.wall...@me.com
mailto:malcolm.wall...@me.com wrote:


On 6 Jun 2011, at 13:49, Lyndon Maydwell wrote:

  I would be fantastic if XCode wasn't a dependency.  ...
 
  Not to detract at all from the work of the wonderful GHC and Haskell
  Platform contributors in any way. For me it would just make it that
  much easier to convince mac-using friends to give Haskell a try.

The ghc team already bundle a copy of gcc in their Windows
distribution, precisely because it can be fiddly to get a working
copy of gcc for that platform otherwise.  I wonder if they would
consider the possibility of shipping gcc on Mac too?  (There may be
good reasons not to do that, but let's have the discussion.)

Regards,
Malcolm

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Re: How to install GhC on a Mac without registering?

2011-06-06 Thread Sean Leather
On Mon, Jun 6, 2011 at 16:47, Malcolm Wallace wrote:

 The ghc team already bundle a copy of gcc in their Windows distribution,
 precisely because it can be fiddly to get a working copy of gcc for that
 platform otherwise.  I wonder if they would consider the possibility of
 shipping gcc on Mac too?  (There may be good reasons not to do that, but
 let's have the discussion.)


I would be in favor of this -- assuming it didn't create new problems --
especially if it meant the latest GHC installer could be used on older
versions of Mac OS X. The Windows installer still works for Windows 2000,
but the Mac installer requires the Snow Leopard.

Regards,
Sean
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Re: How to install GhC on a Mac without registering?

2011-06-06 Thread Ian Lynagh
On Mon, Jun 06, 2011 at 03:47:57PM +0100, Malcolm Wallace wrote:
 
 On 6 Jun 2011, at 13:49, Lyndon Maydwell wrote:
 
  I would be fantastic if XCode wasn't a dependency.  ...
  
  Not to detract at all from the work of the wonderful GHC and Haskell
  Platform contributors in any way. For me it would just make it that
  much easier to convince mac-using friends to give Haskell a try.
 
 The ghc team already bundle a copy of gcc in their Windows distribution, 
 precisely because it can be fiddly to get a working copy of gcc for that 
 platform otherwise.  I wonder if they would consider the possibility of 
 shipping gcc on Mac too?  (There may be good reasons not to do that, but 
 let's have the discussion.)

I'm pretty sure we aren't allowed to redistribute XCode.

As well as gcc and friends, I think XCode also includes various headers
and/or libraries that we need.

If there is an alternative - especially one that allows us to support
multiple versions of OS X more easily - then using it may make sense.


Thanks
Ian


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