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.

I feel bound to say that feedback would come faster if you started with the author of the package or at least copied your request to the author. I only became aware of this when I did because Simon Peyton Jones was good enough to forward your mail to me. I haven't built HGL for GHC anytime recently so I didn't have a ready to run solution handy. Attached is a hastily cobbled together Makefile for Unix. To use it: 1) Install GreenCard (the makefile assumes it is in $HOME/local but you can change that easily). 2) Download graphics-2.0.4 from the web site. 3) Copy this Makefile into graphics-2.0.4/lib/x11/Makefile.ghc 4) make -f Makefile.ghc clean 5) make -f Makefile.ghc demo 6) ./demo A similar Makefile should work for Windows but I don't have a Windows installation of GHC at the moment so I can't test it. There are the makings of a GHC package description file in the Xlib source code (hslibs/xlib/xlib.conf.in) but the code rotted quickly after Xlib was removed from the standard GHC hslib build (about a day after it was added). -- Alastair Reid Reid Consulting (UK) Ltd default: demo DEMO=../../demos/HelloWorld.hs GREENCARD=green-card GCDIR = $(HOME)/local/green-card X_LIBS=-L/usr/X11R6/lib HC = ghc GCLIBDIR = $(GCDIR)/lib/ghc GC_SRCS = $(wildcard *.gc) HSGC_SRCS = $(addsuffix .hs, $(basename $(GC_SRCS))) HS_SRCS = $(wildcard *.hs) $(HSGC_SRCS) C_SRCS = $(wildcard cbits/*.c) OBJS = $(addsuffix .o, $(basename $(HS_SRCS) $(C_SRCS))) SRC_HC_OPTS += -fglasgow-exts -fvia-C SRC_HC_OPTS += -syslib data SRC_HC_OPTS += -syslib text SRC_HC_OPTS += -monly-3-regs # SRC_HC_OPTS += -package greencard SRC_HC_OPTS += $(X_CFLAGS) # compiling via the ghc target has historically been the most reliable # approach SRC_GC_OPTS += --target ghc #SRC_GC_OPTS += --target ffi SRC_GC_OPTS += --include-dir $(GCLIBDIR) EXTRA_LD_OPTS += $(X_LIBS) -lX11 .SUFFIXES : .gc .hs .o .hi .lhs %.hs : %.gc $(GREENCARD) $(SRC_GC_OPTS) $< -o $@ %.o : %.hs $(HC) $(SRC_HC_OPTS) $(EXTRA_HC_OPTS) -c $< -o $@ %.o : %.lhs $(HC) $(SRC_HC_OPTS) $(EXTRA_HC_OPTS) -c $< -o $@ %.hi : %.o @: clean: rm -f $(HSGC_SRCS) objs: $(HSGC_SRCS) $(OBJS) .PRECIOUS: $(HSGC_SRCS) demo : $(DEMO) $(OBJS) $(HC) $(SRC_HC_OPTS) $(EXTRA_HC_OPTS) $^ $(EXTRA_LD_OPTS) -o $@ depends.mk : $(HS_SRCS) $(HC) -M -optdep-f -optdepdepends.mk $(SRC_HC_OPTS) $^ -include depends.mk