HGL with GHC in Win32

21 Jun 2002

      S J Thompson  writes:
...
Can anyone help? I would like to run a program using the Haskell
Graphics Library under GHC on Windows. HGL is listed as a package
(when ghc is asked about its packages) but not actually
distributed
as a package with ghc-5.02.3. On trying to remedy this,
  - I am able to compile HGL by hand on windows, but on executing
  the HelloWorld.hs the program hangs: nothing happens.
  - HGL doesn't appear to compile on unix (solaris).
I'd be grateful for any feedback.
As far as I can see, none of the replies so far answered Simon's
Win32 question, so I had quick look:

  - Alastair suggested using a different green card target, but no 
    user green-carding seems needed in the win32 case -- the win32 
    binding comes with ghc, and the win32 graphics sources don't
    seem to include green card input (no .gc, .gc.in, only .hs)

  - using ghc --make, compilation is no (big) problem but 
    graphics-2.0.4.src.tar.gz and SOE.msi's graphics are out of synch

  - running examples compiled against minimally modified 
    graphics-2.0.4 win32 sources just blocks
  - running examples compiled against SOE.msi's graphics win32 
    sources kind of works sometimes (although that may not be
    obvious), but more often it produces odd effects, not at all 
    in line with the Hugs behaviour for the same sources 

  - the full-screen titlebar effect with the SOE variant suggests
    some window-handling incompatibility, if it wasn't for Hugs and
    GHC using the same graphics source code.. (is there a difference 
    in the win32 bindings for Hugs vs GHC?)

It seems that others started to look into this some 6 months ago,
which is why the SOE version is slightly more successful, but no
further progress is recorded in CVS. Has anyone succeeded in
removing the remaining quirks?

Claus

PS.

  Some more details (win2k/cygwin, if that matters):

  The file graphics-2.0.4.src.tar.gz from the X11 section at

    http://haskell.org/graphics/downloading.html

  includes both x11 and win32 directories, but the win32-branch is out
  of synch (modifications to get it to compile with ghc on win32 are
  relatively straightforward, but then the resulting executable just
  hangs, so there must be some less obvious changes missing).

  The main Hugs98 download page at

    http://cvs.haskell.org/Hugs/pages/downloading.htm

  links to the graphics-bundle, but also provides an SOE bundle
  (SOE.msi), which includes a graphics bundle (also available
  separately). Again, the graphics bundle includes both x11 and
  win32 branches, but in this version, the win32 branch compiles
  without further changes. The resulting executables produce
  titlebars (full screen width) instead of windows as default, 
  but double-clicking on the title bars unfolds a (full-screen) 
  window, and some simple examples seem to run more or less okay
  (often less:-(. Here are two trivial examples:

    import GraphicsUtils 

    main = runGraphics $ do
           w <- openWindow "testing" (200,200)
           drawInWindow w $ text (100,100) "1,2,3"
           getKey w 
           closeWindow w

  The window size is ignored (full-screen titlebar effect), and
  after a keypress, the window closes, but the executable has to
  be stopped by ctrl-c. With a slight modification,

    main = runGraphics $ do
           w <- openWindow "testing" (200,200)
           drawInWindow w $ text (100,100) "1,2,3"
           drawInWindow w $ polygon [(50,50),(100,100),(50,100)]
           getKey w 
           closeWindow w

  we get:

    $ a.out
    Uncaught Error: Polygon: Not enough storage is available 
    to process this command.
     (error code: 8)

  Both examples run just fine with Hugs on win32, using the same win32
  branch of the same graphics bundle. This may indicate differences in
  the win32 bindings themselves?

  The CVS pages (how do I find the latest location of stuff in
  there, btw? is there a libraries version of HGL?) at

  http://cvs.haskell.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/fptools/hslibs/graphics/lib/win32/...

  list some changes by Sigbjorn, suggesting that Simon was not the
  first to run into these problems: "Misc changes to have it *compile*
  with ghc-5.02.1 (but not exec correctly). Based on patches
  contrib'ed by Frank Dellaert."

PPS. Things are starting to get hard to find. Compiling a 
     list of all locations of various graphics variants on 
     {www,cvs}.haskell.org is left as an exercise.. :-(

HGL with GHC in Win32

C.Reinke