- Haskell-Cafe - Haskell.org

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Please repair Hugs-for-Windows download links
by Anthony Clayden 30 Apr '20

30 Apr '20

Hi Vanessa, Thorkil, Yes I'm afraid Hugs is unmaintained. If you look at that Hugs-Bugs thread, Neil was kind enough to reply, but it seems everyone is locked out of maintaining the site. > Isn’t hugs unmaintained? Cool stuff but definitely vintage! (Nearly) gone, but not forgotten. There's a few people over the years have built from source, there's a few repos on github. With a bit of time on my hands lately ... I've built the wonderful WinHugs from source, so that I can fix a long-standing bit of bogusness in GHC. (GHC's behaviour is just not worth trying to make sense of.) And ref the discussion of GHC's awkwardness wrt Windows, WinHugs is just so nicely Windows-y, with a few-clicks install. Persuading (Win)Hugs to compile wasn't plain sailing, and there's a few of the libraries/packages have bitrotted beyond repair. But it is sooooo worth it, compared to the ugly GHC experience; plus you get a half-decent records system with Trex. (I've just been adding field label puns to it, to catch up with GHC.) AntC >* On Apr 26, 2020, at 10:25 AM, Thorkil Naur via Haskell-Cafe <haskell-cafe at haskell.org <http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe>> wrote: *> >* Dear Cafe, *> >* Having recently had occasion to suggest the use of Hugs, I found that the *>* links provided for WinHugs and MinHugs on *> >* https://www.haskell.org/hugs/pages/downloading.htm <https://www.haskell.org/hugs/pages/downloading.htm> *> >* are broken. In the discussion "When did it become so hard to install *>* Haskell on Windows?" *> >* https://mail.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell-cafe/2020-April/132129.html <https://mail.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell-cafe/2020-April/132129.html> *> >* Anthony Clayden *> >* https://mail.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell-cafe/2020-April/132155.html <https://mail.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell-cafe/2020-April/132155.html> *> >* referred to *> >* https://mail.haskell.org/pipermail/hugs-bugs/2018-July/001914.html <https://mail.haskell.org/pipermail/hugs-bugs/2018-July/001914.html> *> >* which provides working links: *> >* https://www.haskell.org/hugs/downloads/2006-09/WinHugs-Sep2006.exe <https://www.haskell.org/hugs/downloads/2006-09/WinHugs-Sep2006.exe> *>* https://www.haskell.org/hugs/downloads/2006-09/MinHugs-Sep2006.exe <https://www.haskell.org/hugs/downloads/2006-09/MinHugs-Sep2006.exe> *> >* If someone with suitable access repaired these links, I would be very *>* grateful. I am an occasional user of both GHC and Hugs, and although GHC *>* shines when it comes to efficiency, I also often appreciate the modest *>* and simple Hugs. *> >* Thanks very much in advance. *> >* Best regards *>* Thorkil *

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Re: [Haskell-cafe] When did it become so hard to install Haskell onWindows?
by Anthony Clayden 29 Apr '20

29 Apr '20

> I think the comments regarding users' proficiency with Chocolatey or PowerShell or whatever are beside the point. The truth is that *nobody* expects that anyone would need to be familiar with those tools in order to install software on Windows. As an example of what I'm talking about, consider Microsoft Visual Studio. This is a big, complex piece of software. And, obviously, it's an application that's used by software developers, rather than ordinary end users. During installation, it runs multiple PowerShell and Cmd scripts, and, for all I know, uses Chocolatey under the hood as well. The point is, I don't have to care about any of that. I install it the same way I install any other software in Windows: I click a few buttons and make a few checkbox selections, and it just runs*. Indeed, my experience too. Furthermore MSVC/Visual Studio upgraded the source distro 'Solution' for Hugs/WinHugs from 2006; and I could go ahead and build that with less than a dozen patches to bitrotted code and config. No sight of a command line needed. In comparison, building the Unixy bits was a nightmare. (And I think little of that was Windows-specific or mixed-platform specific.) > I understand perfectly well the issue with resource constraints preventing the creation of a better experience for Windows users. ... I don't understand. SLPJ is at *Microsoft*; his homepage is at *Microsoft*; his email address is *@Microsoft*. It's ironic that half of the threads Simon starts on ghc-devs relate to crashes/failed builds on *Windows*. And here we are (not for the first time) using up disproportionate airspace on Windows. I appreciate the sponsorship (in effect) the GHC community gets from Microsoft. Could their help provide a little more practical benefit?: there are surely Microsofters who know the tools and have the skills to deliver a few-clicks installer for GHC(?) > And I think it's safe to assume that Microsoft has a few more resources at its disposal to support this than the Haskell community does. So you just need to be honest about it, and state up front that there isn't a simple, seamless way to install the Haskell Platform in Windows at this time, but if you want to install it anyway, here's what you need to do. AntC

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Re: [Haskell-cafe] Hugs sources WITH TESTS?
by Anthony Clayden 29 Apr '20

29 Apr '20

Hi Siddharth, Hugs dates from a different age, when testing was something of an afterthought. I can suggest some places to look: * The hugs-bugs mailing list is the only way to (possibly) contact the original developers. * There's a couple of repos on github: Franklin Chen, Chris Done. Franklin has also grabbed the 2009 developer snapshot. But I suspect the answer is: there are no tests/never were. AntC > I got interested in hugs thanks to the surrounding discussion and went spelunking in their codebase. Weirdly, I can't find a test suite! - The November 2003 version <https://github.com/bollu/hugs/blob/master/src/Makefile.in#L280> has a rule in the makefile to cd ../tests . However, such a folder does not exist in the source tree. - the September 2006 version <https://github.com/haskell-implementations/hugs/blob/master/src/Makefile.in>, doesn't have a test / check rule at all. I find this baffling. Where did the tests go?! If you have access to them --- or if you the story behind where the tests are, please do let me know!

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Problem with publishing project/packages
by Dominik Schrempf 28 Apr '20

28 Apr '20

Hello, I am not sure if this is the right place to report/discuss the following issue, but I have been fiddling around with properly publishing a project I am developing in Haskell for quite some time now. I have encountered various difficulties that I would like to share and hear your opinion about, and also your suggestions about what I could improve, and probably also, how the Haskell ecosystem could be improved. First, I use Stack+Hpack to manage `.cabal` files. I know, that this combination has summoned many controversies, but I don't want to spend hours fiddling around in my `.cabal` files and on the version bounds, so decided for this option. I use strict PVP bounds (--pvp-bounds both options), so that at least compilation should be reproducible, albeit only allowing the specific set of library versions present in the Stack resolver. My project does heavy numerical calculations, so I was awaiting the support of LLVM9.0, which will come with GHC 8.10, for a long time. In the meantime, I tried to compile and publish my project in its current state with the newest Stack resolver 15.x with GHC 8.8.3. On my local machine, compilation and the development cycle work reasonably well, but as soon as I try to publish my work, I have serious trouble. First, I encountered an issue with auto generated modules of the packages causing trouble in the `.cabal` files generated by Hpack [1]. I think this is because the Cabal specification was improved (i.e., has changed), and new specifications have to be honored. I try to work around the issue by directly specifying the newest Cabal specification 3.0 and by tinkering around with the flags, until Hpack produces files compatible with the newest version of Cabal. Finally, I can create source tarballs with `stack sdist --pvp-bounds both`. However, I cannot upload these tarballs, because somehow, the created `.cabal` files in the source tarballs include dependencies of the following form: `base : {} >= x.y, <= z.a` (or something similar), and Hackage chokes on this form (is this a new syntax? or is it just a bug?). So I think, maybe this is caused by an incompatibility of Stack with my Cabal or cabal-install version, which are newer than the newest ones officially supported by Stack. I had already lost one day of working time at this point. I did not give up, but decided to install a Cabal version officially supported by Stack. Also, I removed all my dependencies on auto-generated modules from the packages and the `.cabal` files, I reverted other changes I had implemented because of the Cabal specification change (for example, reverting all license identifiers). I managed to compile and publish my project on Hackage. However, Hackage is not able to compile the packages and show the documentation (which is what I need most). Because I am going the easy route, and use strict PVP bounds, Hackage cannot compile my packages because they depend on base >= 4.13, and Cabal version 3.0. It took me another hour or so, to find out that the official package repository of Haskell does not support the official base library which has been published over six months ago. From a users point of view, this is unacceptable. I have found some resources about this issue now, but I was not aware of this discrepancy before experiencing it. So my next thought is: "Let's just put it on Stackage, because the best days of Hackage seem to be over...". However, I cannot do that, because my project needs to compile on Hackage in order to be put on Stackage... I guess all this is consequence of using an operating system with up-to-date packages (Arch Linux), and my inherent demand to use the newest compiler, and so on. However, I feel that it is not entirely my fault, the new compiler with the new base libraries should be supported by the official repository, and in a coherent way by the most widely used build tools Cabal and Stack (which uses Hpack by default, by the way). I sincerely apologize for being so harsh, but I am angry at the ecosystem, and angry at myself, because, obviously, I don't know enough to get things done. Thanks for your feedback, it is appreciated! Dominik Schrempf References: [1] https://github.com/sol/hpack/issues/384 [2] In case of interest, the project I am developing is a set of libraries/binaries to be used in evolutionary biology https://github.com/dschrempf/elynx

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Re: [Haskell-cafe] Problem with publishing project/packages
by Olaf Klinke 28 Apr '20

28 Apr '20

> $ cabal haddock --for-hackage --hyperlink-source > $ cabal upload --documentation --publish dist/pkg-0.1-docs.tar.gz I also have projects where the normal build is fine but `stack haddock` fails on some dependency. I resorted to `stack haddock --no-haddock-deps` and at least obtained documentation for _my_ package, but with missing/broken links to the dependencies. Olaf

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Questions: Using Hackage as a package maintainer?
by Saurabh Nanda 28 Apr '20

28 Apr '20

Hi, I seem to be struggling with Hackage [1], specifically package candidates. Is this the right place to ask the following questions: - Does Hackage generate docs for package candidates? How long does it take. I have waited for 12+ hours and can't seem to find any docs. - If building docs fails, where is the error displayed? (especially for package candidates) - Do **warnings** affect this process? I see the following warning once I upload a package candidate: 'ghc-options: -main-is' is not portable. - Once I upload a package candidate, shouldn't it show-up on this page automatically - https://hackage.haskell.org/packages/candidates/ ? (my package is not showing-up here) - Is there a page which shows all the packages that have been uploaded by my Hackage user account? [1] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/61463139/does-hackage-generate-haddocks… -- Saurabh.

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Re: [Haskell-cafe] When did it become so hard to install Haskell onWindows?
by Gregory Guthrie 28 Apr '20

28 Apr '20

Re: Windows installs Anthony Clayden <anthony_clayden(a)clear.net.nz> writes: > ... > Users who don't want to use Chocolatey are encouraged to use the usual > binary distributions [1], as in the past. > [1] https://downloads.haskell.org/ghc/8.10.1/ Thanks; I didn't see any binary labelled Windows there. Dr. Gregory Guthrie Maharishi International University ----------------------------------------------------------------

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Munich Virtual Haskell Meeting, 2020-04-30 @ 19:30
by Leah Neukirchen 27 Apr '20

27 Apr '20

Dear all, This week, our monthly Munich Haskell Meeting will take place again on Thursday, April 30. **Due to curfew in Bavaria, this meeting will take place online!** For details see here: http://muenchen.haskell.bayern/dates.html A Google Meet link to join the room will be provided on Thursday. Everybody is welcome, especially the Haskellers from Bavaria that do not usually come to our Munich meetings due to travel distance! cu, -- Leah Neukirchen <leah(a)vuxu.org> https://leahneukirchen.org/

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Hugs sources WITH TESTS?
by Siddharth Bhat 27 Apr '20

27 Apr '20

Hello, I got interested in hugs thanks to the surrounding discussion and went spelunking in their codebase. Weirdly, I can't find a test suite! - The November 2003 version <https://github.com/bollu/hugs/blob/master/src/Makefile.in#L280> has a rule in the makefile to cd ../tests . However, such a folder does not exist in the source tree. - the September 2006 version <https://github.com/haskell-implementations/hugs/blob/master/src/Makefile.in>, doesn't have a test / check rule at all. I find this baffling. Where did the tests go?! If you have access to them --- or if you the story behind where the tests are, please do let me know! Thanks a lot, ~Siddharth -- https://bollu.github.io/

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Re: [Haskell-cafe] Windows Haskell CI
by Ben Franksen 27 Apr '20

27 Apr '20

Am 27.04.20 um 15:26 schrieb J. Garrett Morris: > You might find Tamar's post on Windows packaging of GHC useful. He > includes CI support as one of the motivations: > > https://hub.zhox.com/posts/introducing-haskell-dev/ Yes, very useful indeed. Thanks! Cheers Ben

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