Hi All, Sorry for the late reply, I need to adjust my mail filtering rules to let these mails go to my inbox as well. I have also taken a few passes through the windows trac and there are a lot of issues with someone assigned to them but with no activity so a while on them. I was also wondering the state of these.

The Win32 package for example, is dreadfully lacking in maintainership. While we merge patches, it would be great to see a Windows developer spearhead and clean it up

A while back I was looking at adding some functionality to this package, but could never figure out which one was actually being used. I think there are multiple repositories out there.

Would folks be interested in a Skype/Hangout sometime

I would be interested in this, though timezones may prove to be an issue, or not. Regards, Tamar On Tue, Oct 28, 2014 at 11:02 PM, Simon Peyton Jones wrote:

The people problem is tricky. At work, this would be the right time to do a video chat and at least see the faces of the other people involved. Would folks be interested in a Skype/Hangout sometime? It would be interesting to hear what interests / skills / resources / constraints we have between us.

I think that’s a great idea, thanks. It’s easier to work with people with whom you have formed a personal relationship, and a video conf is a good way to do that.

Simon

*From:* ghc-devs [mailto:ghc-devs-bounces@haskell.org] *On Behalf Of *Gintautas Miliauskas *Sent:* 28 October 2014 16:08 *To:* Austin Seipp *Cc:* kyra; ghc-devs@haskell.org *Subject:* Re: GHC on Windows (extended/broad discussion)

Hey Austin,

thanks for pushing this forward. It sure looks like Windows deserves more attention than it is getting.

We definitely need a broader action plan. My thoughts were close to yours:

1. Push through the gcc compiler upgrade (D339)

2. Fix the Windows continuous builds. This is necessary to prevent regressions.

3. Make sure validate.sh results are clean on Windows. Tests that are known to be failing are not providing new information, they should be disabled and issues filed.

4. Triage the Windows bug list. I already made a few passes, but most of the bugs are far from trivial. I think we'll need to prioritize very aggressively to focus the limited resources.

Are there any broader ideas for architecture-level changes related to GHC on Windows?

The people problem is tricky. At work, this would be the right time to do a video chat and at least see the faces of the other people involved. Would folks be interested in a Skype/Hangout sometime? It would be interesting to hear what interests / skills / resources / constraints we have between us.

On Sat, Oct 25, 2014 at 2:24 AM, Austin Seipp wrote:

Gintautas, Tamar, Roman,

(CC'ing those on https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/WindowsTaskForce, and Kyrill, who has helped us out much in the past)

Thank you all for all your help with Windows recently. I apologize for not responding to some of your concerns sooner in the recent threads about tarballs, etc.

First off, all your contributions are extremely welcome - GHC has had many talented Windows hackers in days long past, but these days this number has dwindled! Anyone who has an interest in GHC on Windows is in a place to make a big impact and help us. All the work Gintautas has done for example, will dramatically improve the ghc-tarballs scenario.

On that note: Gintautas, I will get D339 merged in ASAP, as soon as I test it and make a download mirror for you. Haskell.org has an awesome new CDN setup, and once I implement https://downloads.haskell.org, it will be easy to update tarballs and serve them to mass amounts of users.

However, beyond that, we still need more done. First off, if you can help, we can help you! We can make lots of Windows build bots for people on demand, so if you're in desperate need of disk space or your computers are a bit slow, we can help accommodate.

Right now, we have nightly builds with Gabor's[1] build system, and soon, we're working on a Phabricator integration, which should be great - and hopefully reduce the amount of breakage substantially.

I also notice there is a ticket list of Windows issues[2], and that's fantastic. After a quick glance, a lot of these tickets are old, duplicates, or could possibly be closed or fixed easily. A good first task for any new contributor would be to go through this list, and try to replicate some of them! And you can always ask me - I can certainly help you navigate GHC a bit to get somewhere.

But there are still other things. The Win32 package for example, is dreadfully lacking in maintainership. While we merge patches, it would be great to see a Windows developer spearhead and clean it up - we could even make some improvements in GHC itself based on this. This would be an excellent opportunity to make a good impact in the broader ecosystem!

Finally, we desperately need someone to consult with when we're up a creek. Are certain patches OK for Windows? What's the best way to fix certain bugs, or implement certain features? I feel like often we try to think about this, but it's a bit lonely when nobody else is there to help! I'm not sure how to fix this, other than encouraging things like doing active code reviews and helping grind out some patches. But at the very minimum, I'd just like to talk with you about things perhaps!

So in summary - the work so far is grand, and we want to help you do more! And I'm sure everyone can help - there's always so much to do and so little time, we need to encourage it all we can.

As Simon says: Upward and Onward!

[1] http://haskell.inf.elte.hu/builders/ [2] https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/query?status=!closed&os=Windows&desc=1&order=id

-- Regards,

Austin Seipp, Haskell Consultant Well-Typed LLP, http://www.well-typed.com/

-- Gintautas Miliauskas

_______________________________________________ ghc-devs mailing list ghc-devs@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/ghc-devs

By the way, regarding that repository, could someone merge my pull request https://github.com/haskell/win32/pull/27? In general, it's a bit frustrating how a lot of the patches in the Phabricator queue seem to take a while to get noticed. Don't take it personally, I'm just sharing my impressions, but I do feel it's taking away some momentum - not good for me & other contributors, and not good for the project. I know reviewers are understaffed, maybe consider spreading commit rights a bit more widely until the situation improves? On Wed, Oct 29, 2014 at 11:04 AM, Herbert Valerio Riedel

wrote:

On 2014-10-29 at 10:59:18 +0100, Phyx wrote:

[...]

...

...

The Win32 package for example, is dreadfully lacking in maintainership. While we merge patches, it would be great to see a Windows developer spearhead and clean it up

A while back I was looking at adding some functionality to this package, but could never figure out which one was actually being used. I think there are multiple repositories out there.

I'm not sure which multiple repositories you have seen, but

http://hackage.haskell.org/package/Win32

points quite clearly to

https://github.com/haskell/win32

and that's the official upstream repository GHC tracks (via a locally mirrored repo at git.haskell.org)

Cheers, hvr

-- Gintautas Miliauskas

I bet Bryan would willingly cede maintainership of Win32. I’m copying him. Bryan? From: Herbert Valerio Riedel [mailto:hvriedel@gmail.com] Sent: 29 October 2014 12:47 To: Gintautas Miliauskas Cc: Phyx; Simon Peyton Jones; kyra; ghc-devs@haskell.org Subject: Re: GHC on Windows (extended/broad discussion) On Wed, Oct 29, 2014 at 12:36 PM, Gintautas Miliauskas mailto:gintautas@miliauskas.lt> wrote: By the way, regarding that repository, could someone merge my pull requesthttps://github.com/haskell/win32/pull/27? ​The problem here is that the official maintainer according to​ http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Library_submissions#The_Core_Libraries ​is Bryan, so he's the one supposed to pull the trigger on pull-requests (unless he's ok with GHC HQ pushing commits straight to `master` or granting the GHC Windows Task Force officially co-maintership of the Win32 package)

Hey Gintautas, Yes, I apologize about that (and I missed this request in my quick read over this email yesterday). To be clear, I apologize if my review/merge latencies are too long. :) What normally happens it that I review and merge patches in bulk, about once or twice a week. I'll review about, say, a dozen patches one day, and wait a few days for more to come in, then sweep up everything in that time at once. So there are two things: a review latency, *and* a merge latency. However, two things are also clear: 1) This is annoying for people who submit 'rapid improvements', e.g. in the process of working on GHC, you may fix 4 or 5 things, and then not having those in the mainline is a bit of a drain! 2) Phabricator building patches actually means the merge latency can be *shorter*, because in the past, we'd always have to double check if a patch worked in the first place (so it took *even longer* before!) Another thing is that I'm the primary person who lands things off Phabricator, although occasionally other people do too. This is somewhat suboptimal in some cases, since really, providing something has the OK (from me or someone else), anyone should be able to merge it. So I think this can be improved too. Finally, it's also worth mentioning that Phabricator reviews are special (and unlike GitHub) in that people who are *not* reviewers *do not* see the patch by default! That means if I am the *only* person on the review, it is pretty high guarantee that the review will only be done by me, and it will only be merged by me, unless I poke someone else. Others can see your review using a slightly different search criterion, however, but that's not the default. Note this is not a mistake - it is intentional in the design. Why? Because realistically, I'd say for about 85% of the patches that come in, they are irrelevant to 90% of all GHC developers, and historically, 90% of developers will never bother committing it either. It is often pointless to spam them with emails, and enlarging their review queue beyond what's necessary makes things even *worse* for them, since they can't tell what may really deserve their attention. I do want more people reviewing code actively - but to do that, there must be a tradeoff - we should try and keep contributor burden low. Most developers are just our friends after all, including you - not paid GHC hackers! I don't want to overburden you; we need you! I am one of the exceptions to this: I realistically care and want to see about 95% of all patches that go into the tree, at least to keep up to date with what's happening, and also to ensure things get proper oversight - by, say, adding someone else to a review who I want to look at it. This is why I'm the common denominator, and a reviewer of almost every patch (and I think I'm fairly keen on who might care about what). However it's clear that if this is slowing you down we should try to fix it - we want you to help after all! We already have nearly 40 people with commit rights to GHC, and you've clearly dedicated yourself to helping. That's fantastic. Perhaps it's time for you to enter the fray as well so I can get out of your way. :) But I do still want you to submit code reviews, as everyone else does - it really does help everyone, and increases a sense of shared ownership, IMO. In light of this though, I do think I need to ramp up my merge frequency. So how does a plan of just trying to merge all outstanding patches every day sound? This is normally very trivial amounts of time these days, considering Phabricator tends to catch the most obvious failures. BTW: I merged your pull request on the Win32 repository, so we can update MinGW - I didn't realize that it was open at all, and in fact I completely forgot I had permissions to merge things on that repository! Most of the external library management is normally dealt with by Herbert or individual maintainers. On Wed, Oct 29, 2014 at 6:36 AM, Gintautas Miliauskas wrote:

By the way, regarding that repository, could someone merge my pull request?

In general, it's a bit frustrating how a lot of the patches in the Phabricator queue seem to take a while to get noticed. Don't take it personally, I'm just sharing my impressions, but I do feel it's taking away some momentum - not good for me & other contributors, and not good for the project. I know reviewers are understaffed, maybe consider spreading commit rights a bit more widely until the situation improves?

On Wed, Oct 29, 2014 at 11:04 AM, Herbert Valerio Riedel wrote:

...

On 2014-10-29 at 10:59:18 +0100, Phyx wrote:

[...]

...

...

The Win32 package for example, is dreadfully lacking in maintainership. While we merge patches, it would be great to see a Windows developer spearhead and clean it up

A while back I was looking at adding some functionality to this package, but could never figure out which one was actually being used. I think there are multiple repositories out there.

I'm not sure which multiple repositories you have seen, but

http://hackage.haskell.org/package/Win32

points quite clearly to

https://github.com/haskell/win32

and that's the official upstream repository GHC tracks (via a locally mirrored repo at git.haskell.org)

Cheers, hvr

-- Gintautas Miliauskas

_______________________________________________ ghc-devs mailing list ghc-devs@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/ghc-devs

-- Regards, Austin Seipp, Haskell Consultant Well-Typed LLP, http://www.well-typed.com/

On Tue, Oct 28, 2014 at 11:02 PM, Simon Peyton Jones wrote:

The people problem is tricky. At work, this would be the right time to do a video chat and at least see the faces of the other people involved. Would folks be interested in a Skype/Hangout sometime? It would be interesting to hear what interests / skills / resources / constraints we have between us.

I think that’s a great idea, thanks. It’s easier to work with people with whom you have formed a personal relationship, and a video conf is a good way to do that.

Let's try that. Shall we try to find a good timeslot? Sign up at http://doodle.com/34e598zc7m8sbaqm -- Gintautas Miliauskas http://doodle.com/34e598zc7m8sbaqm http://doodle.com/34e598zc7m8sbaqm

Updated. Note that I'm on vacation starting Friday (Nov 7) and will be back only on Nov 24. On Thu, Oct 30, 2014 at 6:40 PM, wrote:

Hi Gintautas,

Is it possible for you to add the rest of next week to the schedule times? I’m unavailable on the given dates.

Kind Regards, Tamar

*From:* Gintautas Miliauskas *Sent:* ‎Thursday‎, ‎October‎ ‎30‎, ‎2014 ‎16‎:‎34 *To:* Simon Peyton Jones *Cc:* kyra , ghc-devs@haskell.org

On Tue, Oct 28, 2014 at 11:02 PM, Simon Peyton Jones < simonpj@microsoft.com> wrote:

...

The people problem is tricky. At work, this would be the right time to do a video chat and at least see the faces of the other people involved. Would folks be interested in a Skype/Hangout sometime? It would be interesting to hear what interests / skills / resources / constraints we have between us.

I think that’s a great idea, thanks. It’s easier to work with people with whom you have formed a personal relationship, and a video conf is a good way to do that.

Let's try that. Shall we try to find a good timeslot? Sign up at http://doodle.com/34e598zc7m8sbaqm

-- Gintautas Miliauskas http://doodle.com/34e598zc7m8sbaqm http://doodle.com/34e598zc7m8sbaqm

-- Gintautas Miliauskas

My timezone is GMT+5 (mostly, sometimes I visit Moscow, which is +3). Cheers, Kyra On 03.11.2014 0:42, Gintautas Miliauskas wrote:

Alright, based on the votes let's do Wednesday (Nov 5) 8:00pm.

Kyrill, what's your timezone? Did this go too much into the evening for you? Would be good to know for next time.

Shall we use Hangouts for the call? Skype would also work for me, but Hangouts is probably a bit easier and more portable.

Looking forward to seeing everyone!

I will try to take notes of the meeting and send them to the mailing list afterwards.

On Thu, Oct 30, 2014 at 9:03 PM, Gintautas Miliauskas mailto:gintautas.miliauskas@gmail.com> wrote:

Updated.

Note that I'm on vacation starting Friday (Nov 7) and will be back only on Nov 24.

On Thu, Oct 30, 2014 at 6:40 PM, mailto:lonetiger@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Gintautas,

Is it possible for you to add the rest of next week to the schedule times? I’m unavailable on the given dates.

Kind Regards, Tamar

*From:* Gintautas Miliauskas mailto:gintautas.miliauskas@gmail.com *Sent:* ‎Thursday‎, ‎October‎ ‎30‎, ‎2014 ‎16‎:‎34 *To:* Simon Peyton Jones mailto:simonpj@microsoft.com *Cc:* kyra mailto:kyrab@mail.ru, ghc-devs@haskell.org mailto:ghc-devs@haskell.org

On Tue, Oct 28, 2014 at 11:02 PM, Simon Peyton Jones mailto:simonpj@microsoft.com> wrote:

The people problem is tricky. At work, this would be the right time to do a video chat and at least see the faces of the other people involved. Would folks be interested in a Skype/Hangout sometime? It would be interesting to hear what interests / skills / resources / constraints we have between us.

I think that’s a great idea, thanks. It’s easier to work with people with whom you have formed a personal relationship, and a video conf is a good way to do that.

Let's try that. Shall we try to find a good timeslot? Sign up at http://doodle.com/34e598zc7m8sbaqm

-- Gintautas Miliauskashttp://doodle.com/34e598zc7m8sbaqm http://doodle.com/34e598zc7m8sbaqm

-- Gintautas Miliauskas

-- Gintautas Miliauskas

(Aaand I messed up the initial calendar invitation. It should be set to the correct time now, 8pm UTC.) On Mon, Nov 3, 2014 at 3:12 PM, Gintautas Miliauskas < gintautas.miliauskas@gmail.com> wrote:

Alright, based on the votes let's do Wednesday (Nov 5) 8:00pm.

...

Sorry, forgot to specify the timezone: 8:00pm UTC.

-- Gintautas Miliauskas

-- Gintautas Miliauskas