December 2009 - Haskell-Cafe

Re: How Can Haskell Be Saved?
by Richard O'Keefe 14 Dec '09

14 Dec '09

On Dec 14, 2009, at 6:16 AM, John D. Earle wrote: > I am already familiar with SUA and it doesn't make Windows POSIX > complaint in a way that I would call genuine. I grant you that certain aspects of Windows POSIX support have earned it the "DeathStation 9000" label, but it's genuine enough to have earned this claim in the Wikipedia entry for POSIX: "Microsoft Windows Services for UNIX 3.5 – enables >>> full POSIX compliance for certain Microsoft Windows products." I also grant you that the Microsoft POSIX subsystem only supported the 1990 version of POSIX and has been described as "close to useless". But of SUA it has been said "As of 2004, server versions of Windows have a POSIX subsystem that supports threads, signals, sockets, and shared memory, less than twenty years after the standard was finalized, and only a little over a decade after Microsoft began advertising POSIX compliance." > It was something I evaluated. There was no point in your mentioning > that it exists unless you had ulterior motives. "ulterior: being intentionally concealed so as to deceive". Nope. You said that Apple and Microsoft hadn't gone down the POSIX line. I pointed out that current MacOS _is_ a Unix; until today I've relied on Single Unix Specification version 3 documents to guide my Mac programming which makes it close enough for me. Today I downloaded the SUSv4 spec (POSIX 2008). I also pointed out that Windows NT had a fully compliant POSIX subsystem, by design, and that Microsoft cared at least enough about POSIX support to buy the company that made what is now SUA. For that matter, no version of Linux, no version of BSD, and no version of OpenSolaris is certified POSIX-compliant (open source projects change too fast for certification to be cheap). Microsoft can't "go the POSIX route" exclusively without killing their cash cow. VMS was the first POSIX-certified system, but that didn't mean DEC or VMS users abandoning VMS. zOS is POSIX-compliant, but I expect most sites running zOS have no intention of switching, and IBM have no intention of making them. > > It isn't what they are telling you that matters; it is what they are > not telling you. It is called a half truth. If Haskell wants to be > saved, it has got to give up the lying. What on earth is Haskell lying about? What does Haskell need to be saved from? (Its growing popularity and mushrooming library?)

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fun with 6.12
by Johannes Waldmann 14 Dec '09

14 Dec '09

download binary distribution for ghc-6.12.1, configure, sudo make install - fine try to build some packages: cabal configure ...: cabal: This version of the cabal program is too old to work with ghc-6.12+. You will need to install the 'cabal-install' package version 0.8 or higher. If you still have an older ghc installed (eg 6.10.4), run: $ cabal install -w ghc-6.10.4 'cabal-install >= 0.8' Right - looks like a very useful error message! Then let's do it: cabal install -w ghc-6.10.4 'cabal-install >= 0.8' Resolving dependencies... cabal: There is no available version of cabal-install that satisfies >=0.8 Indeed, a package with that version does not seem to exist. darcs get --partial http://darcs.haskell.org/cabal-install/ It says 0.7.5, but let's try anyway: sudo ./bootstrap.sh --global ... Error during cabal-install bootstrap: The Haskell package 'network' is required but it is not installed. Aha. Then let's get network from hackage, as in the olden days. And parsec. And mtl. And bytesting. And syb. Well, let's try to use "cabal fetch" to avoid at least some typing. But no, cabal ist too old for 6.12 - and "cabal fetch" does not understand "-w ghc-6.10.4" Manually download HTTP and zlib, and then cabal-install really builds. Great. Try to use it to build some packages, which finally breaks at derive-2.0.1 - but it seems this page is going to be helpful (thanks, guys): http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Patches_and_forks_for_GHC_6.12 anyway I'm stopped now because somewhere along the way this happened: waldmann@octopus:~/software/haskell/ghc-syb$ ghc-pkg check There are problems in package ghc-binary-0.5.0.2: dependency "bytestring-0.9.1.5-01c5fa5da70289596d73fa2e44360d8a" doesn't exist best - J.W.

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Re: [Haskell-cafe] ANN: Hemkay, the 100% Haskell MOD player
by M Xyz 14 Dec '09

14 Dec '09

--- On Mon, 12/14/09, M Xyz <functionallyharmonious(a)yahoo.com> wrote: From: M Xyz <functionallyharmonious(a)yahoo.com> Subject: Re: [Haskell-cafe] ANN: Hemkay, the 100% Haskell MOD player To: "Patai Gergely" <patai_gergely(a)fastmail.fm> Date: Monday, December 14, 2009, 5:50 PM --- On Mon, 12/14/09, Patai Gergely <patai_gergely(a)fastmail.fm> wrote: Also, the actual mixing (limited to the mixChunk function) is embarrassingly slow, and I wonder how much it could be improved without leaving the pure world. The program uses Portaudio for playback... Patai, I asked a similar question about a week ago, inquiring about efficient buffers for audio. I got a good response: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/67258/focus=67293 Working with immutable trees instead of arrays still freaks me out, but page 289 of RWH actually made me feel a little better about it. :)

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Re: [Haskell-cafe] ANN: Hemkay, the 100% Haskell MOD player
by Patai Gergely 14 Dec '09

14 Dec '09

> The more of these I see, the more guilt I feel over the condition of the > portaudio module. There's a good chance that the performance issue you're > seeing is a bad implementation of the portaudio library. Do you have any > specific problems you ran into with portaudio? I'd love to revisit at > some point... Well, when I tried to push whole blocks instead of individual samples, it seemed to miss some of these writes. It might do the same even now, but it wouldn't be noticeable with a sample missing here and there anyway. The interface for writeStream is not very fortunate. It forces me to pack samples into lists no matter what, even if the interleaved list is actually easier to produce. So it should probably provide alternative interfaces for interleaved lists (which would actually be possible right away if writeStream didn't ignore its third argument altogether), and maybe an array interface as well. I don't know if the callback interface works better, maybe that's also worth a shot. Ultimately, it would be probably best if it gave the programmer a higher abstraction, where it is passed a potentially infinite list of samples, and takes care of all the buffering duties. Also, this could be made to play nice with stream fusion in order to get the maximum performance out of it. Gergely -- http://www.fastmail.fm - One of many happy users: http://www.fastmail.fm/docs/quotes.html

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Fwd: Re[4]: [Haskell-cafe] Re: How Can Haskell Be Saved?
by Alberto G. Corona 14 Dec '09

14 Dec '09

> > POSIX subsystem was implemented by MS (and other major players) only > to meet some bureaucratic reqs from DoD/UsGov, and i don't know any > program really using it. just don't mix C library emulation of POSIX > calls on top of Win32 with POSIX subsystem (btw, both are implemented > on top of native Windows API) > > True. I tested the posix subsystem in the early days of NT and I found that fork actually forked nothing:. Exec after fork simply substituted the old process with the new without creation of any new process.. Then I concluded that the Posix sybsystem was there simply to pass the government requirements for public contracts. Probably, some standard executable test. Arguably, the bugs where intentionally there just to make sure that it was useless, for reasons that anyone may guess...

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Why?
by John D. Earle 14 Dec '09

14 Dec '09

This is a matter that I genuinely at the present time do not grasp and I am hoping that some of you who are more familiar with the Haskell language may be able to help enlighten me. I feel the question to be an important one. What material benefit does Haskell derive from being a "pure" functional language as opposed to an impure one? Please provide examples as I require instruction. The following is what I believe to be true at the present time. It seems to be that the decision was made because it was a matter of taste under the belief that computer scientists can and often are superstitious and their superstitions can and often do materially interfere with progress. What I am saying is that at the present time perhaps due to my ignorance I am unfamiliar with how this benefits the language in a material sense. It appears to be a philosophical matter, a matter of identity, what Haskell stands for. The sort of decision that Apple computer and Microsoft made not to go down the POSIX road seems relevant. Historically, Apple did not embrace POSIX. Windows continues to stand for Windows, that is the graphical user interface.

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Re: How Can Haskell Be Saved?
by Erik de Castro Lopo 14 Dec '09

14 Dec '09

All replies to the list please. John D. Earle wrote: > When I came to the Haskell mailing list I intended to advance a thought > which I never got around to and since we are on the topic. I ran into > problems building Haskell from source and I reasoned that since the build > system has a POSIX flavor it might be better to officially build Haskell on > Windows using SUA. The keyword here is "officially". There is a MinGW Linux > cross compiler that allows you to compile a program on Linux that will run > on Windows. > > A problem with using a cross compiler is you won't get to run the test > suite. The windows API reimplementation Wine is not godd for must things but should be more than adequate to run test suites. For libsndfile I release pre-compiled windows binaries that have been cross compiler from Linux to windows. I run the rather comprehensive libsndfile test suite under Wine and it works very well indeed. Unfortunately Wine currently only supports 32 bit windows. For 64 bit windows I still cross compile from Linux, but I then generate a testsuite tarball that contains all the binaries required to run the test suite. This can then be transferred to the target machine and run in a MinGW or Cygwin shell. Erik -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Erik de Castro Lopo http://www.mega-nerd.com/

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platform configure fails to find freeglut
by J. Greg Davidson 14 Dec '09

14 Dec '09

I'm trying to install haskell-platform-2009.2.0.2 on OpenSuse 11.2 Gnu/Linux 2.6.27.39-0.2-default #1 SMP x86_64 My currently installed packages include ghc-6.10.4-5.7 freeglut-080721-20.2.1 ghc-GLUT-doc-2.1.2.0-1.13 ghc-GLUT-devel-2.1.2.0-1.13 ghc-GLUT-prof-2.1.2.0-1.13 When I try to ./configure I get checking GL/glut.h usability... no checking GL/glut.h presence... no checking for GL/glut.h... no configure: error: The GLUT C library is required One would think that with all of this good glut stuff I have installed the configure script would be satisfied, but it's not. Searching for answers only turned up other people with the same problem. Can someone assist me in fixing the problem? BTW - is there an official bug repository for the Haskell Platoform? I couldn't find that either, and I think it's very important! Thanks, _Greg P.S. In case it matters, here are most of my installed haskell packages: ghc-6.10.4-5.7 ghc-binary-devel-0.5.0.1-1.12 ghc-binary-doc-0.5.0.1-1.12 ghc-cairo-devel-0.10.1-1.4 ghc-data-accessor-devel-0.2.0.2-1.7 ghc-data-accessor-doc-0.2.0.2-1.7 ghc-data-accessor-monads-fd-devel-0.2-1.7 ghc-data-accessor-monads-fd-doc-0.2-1.7 ghc-data-accessor-template-devel-0.2.1.1-1.7 ghc-data-accessor-template-doc-0.2.1.1-1.7 ghc-derive-devel-0.1.4-2.55 ghc-derive-doc-0.1.4-2.55 ghc-Diff-devel-0.1.2-1.13 ghc-Diff-doc-0.1.2-1.13 ghc-doc-6.10.4-5.7 ghc-fingertree-devel-0.0-1.12 ghc-fingertree-doc-0.0-1.12 ghc-glib-devel-0.10.1-1.4 ghc-GLUT-devel-2.1.2.0-1.13 ghc-GLUT-doc-2.1.2.0-1.13 ghc-GLUT-prof-2.1.2.0-1.13 ghc-gtk2hs-common-0.10.1-1.4 ghc-gtk2hs-doc-0.10.1-1.4 ghc-gtk-devel-0.10.1-1.4 ghc-monads-fd-devel-0.0.0.1-1.9 ghc-monads-fd-doc-0.0.0.1-1.9 ghc-OpenGL-devel-2.2.2.0-1.15 ghc-OpenGL-doc-2.2.2.0-1.15 ghc-OpenGL-prof-2.2.2.0-1.15 ghc-paths-devel-0.1.0.5-19.14 ghc-paths-doc-0.1.0.5-19.14 ghc-pointedlist-devel-0.3.1-2.6 ghc-pointedlist-doc-0.3.1-2.6 ghc-prof-6.10.4-5.7 ghc-pureMD5-devel-0.2.4-1.7 ghc-pureMD5-doc-0.2.4-1.7 ghc-regex-tdfa-devel-1.1.1-1.10 ghc-regex-tdfa-doc-1.1.1-1.10 ghc-rosezipper-devel-0.1-1.7 ghc-rosezipper-doc-0.1-1.7 ghc-split-devel-0.1.1-1.12 ghc-split-doc-0.1.1-1.12 ghc-terminfo-devel-0.3.0.2-1.14 ghc-terminfo-doc-0.3.0.2-1.14 ghc-transformers-devel-0.1.4.0-1.12 ghc-transformers-doc-0.1.4.0-1.12 ghc-uniplate-devel-1.2.0.3-1.7 ghc-uniplate-doc-1.2.0.3-1.7 ghc-unix-compat-devel-0.1.2.1-1.14 ghc-unix-compat-doc-0.1.2.1-1.14 ghc-utf8-string-devel-0.3.4-1.14 ghc-utf8-string-doc-0.3.4-1.14 ghc-utility-ht-devel-0.0.4-1.7 ghc-utility-ht-doc-0.0.4-1.7 ghc-vty-devel-3.1.8.4-1.11 ghc-vty-doc-3.1.8.4-1.11 ghc-X11-devel-1.4.5-5.16 ghc-X11-doc-1.4.5-5.16 ghc-xmonad-contrib-devel-0.8.1-1.8 ghc-xmonad-contrib-doc-0.8.1-1.8 ghc-xmonad-devel-0.8.1-8.9 ghc-xmonad-doc-0.8.1-8.9 ghc-yi-devel-0.6.0-4.7 ghc-yi-doc-0.6.0-4.7

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GHC 6.12 status and features
by Rafael Gustavo da Cunha Pereira Pinto 14 Dec '09

14 Dec '09

Hi folks, and specially Simon Marlow, I know I should probably be asking to the GHC list, but is there any update on 6.12 since October? Any probable release date? BTW, is there any feature list for the release? Thank all of you involved in bringing this new version to life. GHC rocks! Rafael Gustavo da Cunha Pereira Pinto

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Hint causes GHCi linker error under Windows
by Martin Hofmann 14 Dec '09

14 Dec '09

The following hint code causes GHCi to crash under Windows: > runInterpreter $ loadModules ["SomeModule.hs"] The error message is: GHCi runtime linker: fatal error: I found a duplicate definition for symbol _hs_gtWord64 whilst processing object file C:\Programme\Haskell Platform\2009.2.0.2\ghc-prim-0.1.0.0 HSghc-prim-0.1.0.o This could be caused by: * Loading two different object files which export the same symbol * Specifying the same object file twice on the GHCi command line * An incorrect `package.conf' entry, causing some object to be loaded twice. GHCi cannot safely continue in this situation. Exiting now. Sorry. The problem does not occur under Unix or with a compiled program. IMHO hint tries to start a second instance of GHCi which is not allowed/possible under Windows. If this is the case a more telling error message would be helpful. I used the Haskell Platform, version 2009.2.0.2 under Windows XP. My package.conf is: C:/Programme/Haskell Platform/2009.2.0.2\package.conf: Cabal-1.6.0.3, GHood-0.0.3, GLUT-2.1.1.2, HTTP-4000.0.6, HUnit-1.2.0.3, MonadCatchIO-mtl-0.2.0.0, OpenGL-2.2.1.1, QuickCheck-1.2.0.0, Win32-2.2.0.0, ansi-terminal-0.5.0, ansi-wl-pprint-0.5.1, array-0.2.0.0, base-3.0.3.1, base-4.1.0.0, bimap-0.2.4, bytestring-0.9.1.4, cgi-3001.1.7.1, containers-0.2.0.1, cpphs-1.9, directory-1.0.0.3, (dph-base-0.3), (dph-par-0.3), (dph-prim-interface-0.3), (dph-prim-par-0.3), (dph-prim-seq-0.3), (dph-seq-0.3), extensible-exceptions-0.1.1.0, fgl-5.4.2.2, filepath-1.1.0.2, (ghc-6.10.4), ghc-mtl-1.0.1.0, ghc-paths-0.1.0.6, ghc-prim-0.1.0.0, haddock-2.4.2, haskeline-0.6.2.2, haskell-src-1.0.1.3, haskell-src-exts-1.3.4, haskell98-1.0.1.0, hint-0.3.2.1, hpc-0.5.0.3, html-1.0.1.2, integer-0.1.0.1, mtl-1.1.0.2, network-2.2.1.4, old-locale-1.0.0.1, old-time-1.0.0.2, packedstring-0.1.0.1, parallel-1.1.0.1, parsec-2.1.0.1, pointless-haskell-0.0.1, pretty-1.0.1.0, process-1.0.1.1, random-1.0.0.1, regex-base-0.72.0.2, regex-compat-0.71.0.1, regex-posix-0.72.0.3, rts-1.0, stm-2.1.1.2, syb-0.1.0.1, template-haskell-2.3.0.1, time-1.1.2.4, utf8-string-0.3.6, xhtml-3000.2.0.1, zlib-0.5.0.0 Thanks, Martin

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