On Sat, Nov 24, 2007 at 10:44:45AM +0000, Neil Mitchell wrote:
Hi
can anyone provide a concise list of the major differences between nhc98 and ghc? for example, can i build a cabal package with nhc98? i get that ghc and nhc98 are not interchangeable, otherwise i am not sure
The other major differences:
* nhc is unavailable on Windows * nhc programs run much slower * nhc has fewer users and fewer developers, meaning more bugs
There are also a few advantages: * It was written on an Acorn A4000, an 80s-era PC with a whopping 3MB of memory; as such it is much more memory-friendly than GHC, which at the time wanted 16MB for normal use. * It's unrelated to GHC, which means that the set of bugs are uncorrelated. If you think GHC is doing something wrong, ask NHC for a second opinion. * It's much easier to port than GHC. (And an important disadvantage - The original author of NHC, Niklaus Röjemo, has disappeared off the face of the Internet, and the acting maintainer doesn't actually grok most of the code.) Stefan