Re: [Haskell-cafe] Re: 1,000 packages, so let's build a few!
On Tue, 2009-02-03 at 19:25 +, Andrew Coppin wrote: Don Stewart wrote: The platform is a set of blessed libraries and tools. The distros will still need to package that. To do that for Windows, we're still going to need a windows packaging team, along side Debian, Arch, Gentoo, Mac etc. Right, so, let me make sure I understand this... 1. We sit down and pick a set of libraries that cover a useful range of subject areas, that are mature and stable, and that work well with each other. This is the Haskell Platform. 2. For each OS, a team decides how best to deploy this set of libraries on that specific OS. Is that the plan? More or less, yes. In practise we expect there to be quite a bit of overlap and communication between the OS teams. Duncan ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Re: 1,000 packages, so let's build a few!
Don Stewart wrote: The platform is a set of blessed libraries and tools. The distros will still need to package that. To do that for Windows, we're still going to need a windows packaging team, along side Debian, Arch, Gentoo, Mac etc. Right, so, let me make sure I understand this... 1. We sit down and pick a set of libraries that cover a useful range of subject areas, that are mature and stable, and that work well with each other. This is the Haskell Platform. 2. For each OS, a team decides how best to deploy this set of libraries on that specific OS. Is that the plan? ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Re: 1,000 packages, so let's build a few!
Hi GHC doesn't bundle with cabal-install on any system. What is needed is not for the GHC team to be doing Windows platform packages, but for the Windows Haskell devs to build their own system, as happens on all the Unices. Take GHC's release, wrap it up with native installers, throw in useful libraries and executables like cabal. Done. GHC already takes the GHC release, bundles it up with a native installer, and then throws in useful executables like gcc. It just stops one hop short of done. Windows is special, we already treat Windows special, but currently its just short of useable. Duncan: Saying cabal.exe isn't mature enough to go in 6.10 is a perfect reason, but one that you never gave at the time. If it isn't ready, then that's fine. But if thats the case, will it be in 6.12, or will the standard Windows instructions involve hunting around haskell.org for a prebuild Cabal.exe? Thanks Neil ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
RE: [Haskell-cafe] Re: 1,000 packages, so let's build a few!
Don Stewart wrote: ganesh.sittampalam: Don Stewart wrote: So, wind...@haskell.org anyone? Get the wiki going, get the set of tasks created. Isn't the Haskell Platform going to do all this? Shouldn't interested people just help out there? The platform is a set of blessed libraries and tools. The distros will still need to package that. To do that for Windows, we're still going to need a windows packaging team, along side Debian, Arch, Gentoo, Mac etc. http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Haskell_Platform section 4 talks about making distributions. So what should people be trying to do? Focus on (a) general infrastructure for packaging any Haskell library/binary on Windows (etc), or on (b) the specific task of packaging the Haskell Platform? If (b) then I don't think a whole new mailing list/wiki etc is worthwhile. (a) would obviously be nicer but is no doubt a much harder problem - I guess we'd want to start with Bamse and perhaps make use of the nestedInstalls feature somehow. Ganesh == Please access the attached hyperlink for an important electronic communications disclaimer: http://www.credit-suisse.com/legal/en/disclaimer_email_ib.html == ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Re: 1,000 packages, so let's build a few!
On Tue, 2009-02-03 at 08:26 +, Neil Mitchell wrote: Hi GHC doesn't bundle with cabal-install on any system. What is needed is not for the GHC team to be doing Windows platform packages, but for the Windows Haskell devs to build their own system, as happens on all the Unices. Take GHC's release, wrap it up with native installers, throw in useful libraries and executables like cabal. Done. GHC already takes the GHC release, bundles it up with a native installer, and then throws in useful executables like gcc. It just stops one hop short of done. Windows is special, we already treat Windows special, but currently its just short of useable. Right, that's the job the platform will take on. Duncan: Saying cabal.exe isn't mature enough to go in 6.10 is a perfect reason, but one that you never gave at the time. If it isn't ready, then that's fine. But if thats the case, will it be in 6.12, or will the standard Windows instructions involve hunting around haskell.org for a prebuild Cabal.exe? It'll be in the first platform release which will be well before ghc 6.12. BTW, I think I've been missing your advice and cajoling about Windows platforms. It's been rather quiet recently. Duncan ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Re: 1,000 packages, so let's build a few!
On Mon, 2009-02-02 at 13:49 +0900, Benjamin L.Russell wrote: On Sun, 01 Feb 2009 15:01:28 +, Duncan Coutts duncan.cou...@worc.ox.ac.uk wrote: On Sat, 2009-01-31 at 16:50 -0800, Don Stewart wrote: Windows people need to set up a wind...@haskell.org to sort out their packaging issues, like we have for debian, arch, gentoo, freebsd and other distros. Unless people take action to get things working well on their platform, it will be slow going. Actually instead of going off into another mailing list I would encourage them to volunteer on the cabal-devel mailing list to help out. There is lots we could do to improve the experience on Windows and half the problem is we do not have enough people working on it or testing things. That sounds like a great idea, but what specifically should Windows users do to help out? If we try to install a package on Windows and encounter a bug that we can't figure out, would it be sufficient to subscribe at http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/cabal-devel and to submit a bug report to cabal-de...@haskell.org ? So on cabal-devel we are concerned with bugs and missing features in Cabal that make life hard for windows users. We cannot directly fix individual packages, there are too many and that is the job of the package maintainers. We are interested in solving the more systemic problems however. So for example working out if we can replace many of the configure scripts: http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/hackage/ticket/482 Or just improving the error message when we fail to run configure http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/hackage/ticket/403 Or support in the cabal-install planner for non-Haskell dependencies (so we can track dependencies on sh.exe or libs that are not available on Windows.) The point is to make best use of the available information to work out which packages have no hope of building on Windows. We also have a collection of tickets that primarily affect Windows: http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/hackage/query?status=newstatus=assignedstatus=reopenedplatform=Windowsorder=priority many of these need help from windows users, either to decide what the solution should be or to test the solution. Having more Cabal volunteers who use Windows would be great. I've recently been trying to solve some permissions problems on Windows which is pretty hard without having proper access to a Windows system. There are also some important tickets that are just sitting around waiting for some policy decision to be made. The couple people who used to advise us on these questions (like what default install locations should be etc) have not had time recently so these things just sit around with no decisions made. So actually just having more Windows users subscribed to cabal-devel and commenting on tickets would be very useful, even if you do not have much time for hacking. Duncan ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Re: 1,000 packages, so let's build a few!
ndmitchell: Hi So actually just having more Windows users subscribed to cabal-devel and commenting on tickets would be very useful, even if you do not have much time for hacking. I believe that as soon as a Windows user starts doing that you'll start asking them for patches :-) There are a number of reasons that we have fewer Windows developers: * Some of it comes down to social reasons - for some reason it seems to be socially acceptable to belittle Windows (and Windows users) on the Haskell mailing lists and #haskell. * Some of it comes down to technical issues - for example not having cabal.exe bundled with GHC 6.10.1 on Windows was a massive mistake (although I've heard everyone argue against me, I've not yet heard a Windows person argue against me). * Part of it comes down to most developers not being Windows people. * A little is because Windows is a second class citizen even in the libraries, my OS is NOT mingw32 - mingw32 is not even an OS, its a badly typed expression! How would you like it if your OS was listed as Wine? Things like this tell me that Haskell isn't Windows friendly, at best its windows tolerant. * Things like Gtk2hs, which Windows users need building for them, don't release in sync with GHC, which makes it hard to use. * Windows machines don't usually have a C compiler, and have a very different environment - while the rest of the world is starting to standardise. I gave up on fighting the fight when people decided not to bundle cabal.exe with Windows - and now I'm too busy with my day job... Now I'd say Duncan is the most vocal and practical Windows developer, even overlooking the fact he doesn't run Windows. GHC doesn't bundle with cabal-install on any system. What is needed is not for the GHC team to be doing Windows platform packages, but for the Windows Haskell devs to build their own system, as happens on all the Unices. Take GHC's release, wrap it up with native installers, throw in useful libraries and executables like cabal. Done. It's not the GHC compiler team's job to build distro-specific bundles. So, wind...@haskell.org anyone? Get the wiki going, get the set of tasks created. -- Don ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Re: 1,000 packages, so let's build a few!
jwlato: Duncan Coutts wrote: Some are trivial and should be done away with. For example the ones that just check if a C header / lib is present are unnecessary (and typically do not work correctly). The next point release of Cabal can do these checks automatically, eg: Configuring foo-1.0... cabal: Missing dependencies on foreign libraries: * Missing header file: foo.h * Missing C libraries: foo, bar, baz This problem can usually be solved by installing the system packages that provide these libraries (you may need the -dev versions). If the libraries are already installed but in a non-standard location then you can use the flags --extra-include-dirs= and --extra-lib-dirs= to specify where they are. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! For those of us who want to write cross-platform (i.e. Windows) bindings to C libraries, this is great news. It will be important now to report the lack of uses of these portability tests back to the authors of packages. A start would be to have hackage warn, I suppose. -- Don ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Re: 1,000 packages, so let's build a few!
Hi So actually just having more Windows users subscribed to cabal-devel and commenting on tickets would be very useful, even if you do not have much time for hacking. I believe that as soon as a Windows user starts doing that you'll start asking them for patches :-) There are a number of reasons that we have fewer Windows developers: * Some of it comes down to social reasons - for some reason it seems to be socially acceptable to belittle Windows (and Windows users) on the Haskell mailing lists and #haskell. * Some of it comes down to technical issues - for example not having cabal.exe bundled with GHC 6.10.1 on Windows was a massive mistake (although I've heard everyone argue against me, I've not yet heard a Windows person argue against me). * Part of it comes down to most developers not being Windows people. * A little is because Windows is a second class citizen even in the libraries, my OS is NOT mingw32 - mingw32 is not even an OS, its a badly typed expression! How would you like it if your OS was listed as Wine? Things like this tell me that Haskell isn't Windows friendly, at best its windows tolerant. * Things like Gtk2hs, which Windows users need building for them, don't release in sync with GHC, which makes it hard to use. * Windows machines don't usually have a C compiler, and have a very different environment - while the rest of the world is starting to standardise. I gave up on fighting the fight when people decided not to bundle cabal.exe with Windows - and now I'm too busy with my day job... Now I'd say Duncan is the most vocal and practical Windows developer, even overlooking the fact he doesn't run Windows. Thanks Neil ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
RE: [Haskell-cafe] Re: 1,000 packages, so let's build a few!
Don Stewart wrote: GHC doesn't bundle with cabal-install on any system. What is needed is not for the GHC team to be doing Windows platform packages, but for the Windows Haskell devs to build their own system, as happens on all the Unices. Take GHC's release, wrap it up with native installers, throw in useful libraries and executables like cabal. Done. It's not the GHC compiler team's job to build distro-specific bundles. So, wind...@haskell.org anyone? Get the wiki going, get the set of tasks created. Isn't the Haskell Platform going to do all this? Shouldn't interested people just help out there? Ganesh == Please access the attached hyperlink for an important electronic communications disclaimer: http://www.credit-suisse.com/legal/en/disclaimer_email_ib.html == ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Re: 1,000 packages, so let's build a few!
On Mon, Feb 02, 2009 at 10:07:57AM +, Neil Mitchell wrote: Hi The nix package manager (although beeing primarly a linux tool) can run on cygwin as well (at least it did some time ago).. I'd suggest trying that to package windows libraries. It dose generate tag files for you automatically as well. At least it can build dependencies such as C libraries and so on for you automatically as well. Unfortunately I don't have time to work on the windows port. The cool thing about nix is: You can always switch back to the previous generation if something breaks. It organizes the packages like a memory management system. You only reference the target and the deps in between will be build / removed automatically for you if they are no longer used when running the nix garbage collector. There is another drawback: It definitely only works on a ntfs partition. On the other hand it does also support binary distributions and install software by clicking on links. In the end this is perfect for developping (IMHO) even if you have to learn a lot at the beginning. My major problem hindering my starting to work on this is that cygwin doesn't run on Vista running in kvm/ qemu. sh.exe exits and that's it. So if you have a solution for that I'd consider resuming work on it Sincerly Marc Weber ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Re: 1,000 packages, so let's build a few!
ganesh.sittampalam: Don Stewart wrote: GHC doesn't bundle with cabal-install on any system. What is needed is not for the GHC team to be doing Windows platform packages, but for the Windows Haskell devs to build their own system, as happens on all the Unices. Take GHC's release, wrap it up with native installers, throw in useful libraries and executables like cabal. Done. It's not the GHC compiler team's job to build distro-specific bundles. So, wind...@haskell.org anyone? Get the wiki going, get the set of tasks created. Isn't the Haskell Platform going to do all this? Shouldn't interested people just help out there? The platform is a set of blessed libraries and tools. The distros will still need to package that. To do that for Windows, we're still going to need a windows packaging team, along side Debian, Arch, Gentoo, Mac etc. -- Don ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Re: 1,000 packages, so let's build a few!
Neil Mitchell wrote: * Part of it comes down to most developers not being Windows people. That certainly describes me. I find the platform annoying and stressful (all the worries about security). But another issue is: it's proprietary and expensive. The base OS isn't cheap, and doesn't even come with development tools. While GHC and friends do run on Windows for free, if you are trying to deal certain things (Windows GUIs, ODBC, etc.) it is difficult at best without shelling out the really big bucks for the Microsoft development environment. Having said that, I agree that good Windows support is a worthwhile goal for the community, and I very much appreciate patches and bug reports from Windows users. However, I am in somewhat of a difficult position when it comes to turning the latter into actual patches. Of course, MacOS X is also proprietary and expensive. But it has at least a bastardized POSIX core, and as such seems to never really need much porting from my Linux development environment. At least until Mac users start demanding resource fork and finder info support. ;-) -- John ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Re: 1,000 packages, so let's build a few!
On Mon, 2009-02-02 at 10:07 +, Neil Mitchell wrote: * Some of it comes down to technical issues - for example not having cabal.exe bundled with GHC 6.10.1 on Windows was a massive mistake (although I've heard everyone argue against me, I've not yet heard a Windows person argue against me). There are reasonable arguments both ways. Listening to some people it would seem that cabal.exe is there to taunt people with the potential for usable packaging and then to punish them with broken packages, quirky dependency resolution and twisty inconsistent installed package graphs. There is a tension between getting it out there because it's useful, and not putting out something that is going to frustrate and annoy new users. With the current release that balance seems to be pretty fine. I hope that the next release will make it look a little more mature. For example look at how many people have been getting themselves into a complete mess recently from using cabal upgrade. There is a whole new world of exciting mess you can make when using easy automated tools with no safety catches. These are not problems that emerged at first because it was only developers who knew what they were doing who were using it at first. Now that more and more people are using it we're discovering these usability problems. I fear that if we'd gone any quicker that we'd have been completely swamped with bug reports and users might write the whole thing off. Given the available developer resources I don't see how we could have done significantly better (except perhaps by releasing even later). Duncan ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Re: 1,000 packages, so let's build a few!
On Mon, 2009-02-02 at 10:07 +, Neil Mitchell wrote: Hi So actually just having more Windows users subscribed to cabal-devel and commenting on tickets would be very useful, even if you do not have much time for hacking. I believe that as soon as a Windows user starts doing that you'll start asking them for patches :-) Actually I deliberately didn't say that. I would be happy even with some people dispensing advise and testing things. There are a number of reasons that we have fewer Windows developers: * Some of it comes down to social reasons - for some reason it seems to be socially acceptable to belittle Windows (and Windows users) on the Haskell mailing lists and #haskell. Yes plenty of it is social issues. Some of the perceptions in the other direction is that Windows users tend to expect everything to work and not be prepared to help. This may be what they're accustomed to but it tends to rub open source programmers up the wrong way. * Some of it comes down to technical issues - for example not having cabal.exe bundled with GHC 6.10.1 on Windows was a massive mistake (although I've heard everyone argue against me, I've not yet heard a Windows person argue against me). I think if it had been bundled with ghc-6.10 you'd have heard lots more Windows people complaining. * Part of it comes down to most developers not being Windows people. * A little is because Windows is a second class citizen even in the libraries, my OS is NOT mingw32 - mingw32 is not even an OS, its a badly typed expression! How would you like it if your OS was listed as Wine? Things like this tell me that Haskell isn't Windows friendly, at best its windows tolerant. Note that cabal/hackage does not classify it that way. * Things like Gtk2hs, which Windows users need building for them, don't release in sync with GHC, which makes it hard to use. Hardly anything releases in sync with ghc and it's unrealistic to think that it can or should. The special problem for gtk2hs is that it has to be distributed as a binary so it's guaranteed not to work with new ghc releases where as most other packages will still build from source. Again this comes down to lack of developers and lack of access to Windows hardware. If we had the infrastructure we'd have auto-builders to make releases with new ghc releases. Perhaps that's something we can get people to work on. More automation is good. Building all of hackage on windows and reporting the results would be very useful to everyone. Not once but continuously. * Windows machines don't usually have a C compiler, and have a very different environment - while the rest of the world is starting to standardise. I gave up on fighting the fight when people decided not to bundle cabal.exe with Windows - and now I'm too busy with my day job... Now The more I think about it the more I think that we fortuitously made the right decision not to bundle cabal-install with ghc-6.10. We didn't decide to do it due to immaturity but in hindsight that would have been an excellent reason. As I said before, I hope we'll be able to fix enough of the things that it'll be ok for the first platform release. I'd say Duncan is the most vocal and practical Windows developer, even overlooking the fact he doesn't run Windows. I'm going to obtain a license and set up a VM. Duncan ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Re: 1,000 packages, so let's build a few!
On Mon, 2009-02-02 at 13:22 +, John Lato wrote: Duncan Coutts wrote: Some are trivial and should be done away with. For example the ones that just check if a C header / lib is present are unnecessary (and typically do not work correctly). The next point release of Cabal can do these checks automatically, eg: Configuring foo-1.0... cabal: Missing dependencies on foreign libraries: * Missing header file: foo.h * Missing C libraries: foo, bar, baz This problem can usually be solved by installing the system packages that provide these libraries (you may need the -dev versions). If the libraries are already installed but in a non-standard location then you can use the flags --extra-include-dirs= and --extra-lib-dirs= to specify where they are. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Gleb Alexeyev did the majority of the work on this one. I'm most grateful to him for heeding my recent calls for more volunteers for Cabal hacking. For those of us who want to write cross-platform (i.e. Windows) bindings to C libraries, this is great news. Yes. The next step will be for the cabal-install dependency planner to use this information and to complain at the planning stage rather than failing once it starts to try to build things. Duncan ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Re: 1,000 packages, so let's build a few!
On Mon, 2009-02-02 at 08:29 -0800, Don Stewart wrote: jwlato: Duncan Coutts wrote: Some are trivial and should be done away with. For example the ones that just check if a C header / lib is present are unnecessary (and typically do not work correctly). The next point release of Cabal can do these checks automatically, eg: Configuring foo-1.0... cabal: Missing dependencies on foreign libraries: * Missing header file: foo.h * Missing C libraries: foo, bar, baz This problem can usually be solved by installing the system packages that provide these libraries (you may need the -dev versions). If the libraries are already installed but in a non-standard location then you can use the flags --extra-include-dirs= and --extra-lib-dirs= to specify where they are. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! For those of us who want to write cross-platform (i.e. Windows) bindings to C libraries, this is great news. It will be important now to report the lack of uses of these portability tests back to the authors of packages. Note that to get the above checks authors don't have to do anything except list the C libs in the extra-libraries field as normal. No Setup.hs code or ./configure scripts are required (though it should work with packages that do use ./configure scripts). A start would be to have hackage warn, I suppose. I'm not quite sure what we can warn about here except the general use of configure scripts (which is not a good idea at least at the moment). We need to work out what everone is using them for first: http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/hackage/ticket/482 Duncan ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
