I am really talking about a module or perhaps a Haskell class that provides notion for multiple threads of execution, semaphores, .. that "hides" POSIX vs Win32 APIs .. i.e. the underlying OS APIs would be totally hidden. The reason I bring this up is that OS abstraction layers are very common in "mainstream" languages like C++. Any code written using an OS abstraction layer is absoutely portable. IMO if Haskell (or say OCaml) want to be accepted by industry this kind of functionality is absolutely critical.

On 10/22/07, Neil Mitchell <ndmitchell@gmail.com> wrote:

> Besides GUI stuff, in what modules are the platform neutral stuff implemented? Or how > do I look for this code?

Most of the code is platform neutral. A few specific bits
(System.Posix, System.Win32) are limited to one operating system, but
that's hardly any of it. If you just write code, there is a strong
chance it will work perfectly on both operating systems. I've only
ever developed Haskell on Windows, and I've never had a Linux user
have a problem with any of it. About the only thing to be "careful"
about with platform differences is that you should make use of the
System.FilePath module to manipulate filepaths, if you are doing that
to any great extent.

If you say what you are tying to do, and why you suspect it might not
"just work" in a cross platform manner, people might be able to
address your specific concerns.

Thanks

Neil

On 10/22/07, Neil Mitchell <ndmitchell@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Bill,
>
> > In the Haskell libraries, is there an OS abstraction module, that would
> > "hide" the POSIX API and Win-32 API? If not, this would be nice so that
> > Haskell "programs" could be written in an OS independent manner!
>
> Yes, Haskell provides a fairly complete API in the base libraries,
> which is platform neutral. If you want platform neutral GUI programs
> then you have Gtk2hs.
>
> Thanks
>
> Neil
>