Why are new releases of libraries required for every GHC release?
Some recent comments suggested that every time there is a new GHC release, there needs to be a new wxHaskell release (or insert name of other library here) to work with it. This seems to be true even for minor upgrades, like 6.4.1 -> 6.4.2. Why is this? Does GHC break binary compatibility at every release? Is this avoidable? This makes using Haskell unnecessarily hard compared to other platforms.
Hi
Some recent comments suggested that every time there is a new GHC release, there needs to be a new wxHaskell release (or insert name of other library here) to work with it. This seems to be true even for minor upgrades, like 6.4.1 -> 6.4.2.
Yes, if you pick Gtk2Hs, wxHaskell. However lots of other libraries will work just fine between GHC releases
Why is this? Does GHC break binary compatibility at every release? Is this avoidable?
It breaks binary compatibility, not source compatibility. Only a relatively small number of libraries are effected. Thanks Neil
On Wed, 2006-11-22 at 09:12 +0000, DavidA wrote:
Some recent comments suggested that every time there is a new GHC release, there needs to be a new wxHaskell release (or insert name of other library here) to work with it. This seems to be true even for minor upgrades, like 6.4.1 -> 6.4.2.
These GUI libs tend only to break on major releases like 6.2 -> 6.4 and 6.4 -> 6.6. In both cases this was due to changes in the way packages are managed. Since these GUI libs are both pretty large and made of several packages they were affected. Many simpler projects were fine with the transition.
Why is this? Does GHC break binary compatibility at every release? Is this avoidable?
Yes this is what you're thinking about with minor upgrades like 6.4.1 -> 6.4.2, so any binary packages, eg windows installers need to be rebuilt from source to work with the new ghc version.
This makes using Haskell unnecessarily hard compared to other platforms.
Well, usually it's only a rebuild so as long as your build system is ok, it's not too hard. Duncan
On Wed, Nov 22, 2006 at 10:39:06 +0000, Duncan Coutts wrote:
On Wed, 2006-11-22 at 09:12 +0000, DavidA wrote:
Some recent comments suggested that every time there is a new GHC release, there needs to be a new wxHaskell release (or insert name of other library here) to work with it. This seems to be true even for minor upgrades, like 6.4.1 -> 6.4.2.
These GUI libs tend only to break on major releases like 6.2 -> 6.4 and 6.4 -> 6.6. In both cases this was due to changes in the way packages are managed. Since these GUI libs are both pretty large and made of several packages they were affected. Many simpler projects were fine with the transition.
Why is this? Does GHC break binary compatibility at every release? Is this avoidable?
Yes this is what you're thinking about with minor upgrades like 6.4.1 -> 6.4.2, so any binary packages, eg windows installers need to be rebuilt from source to work with the new ghc version.
This makes using Haskell unnecessarily hard compared to other platforms.
Well, usually it's only a rebuild so as long as your build system is ok, it's not too hard.
Does this affect any apps at all? On Debian at least, ghc links in all haskell code statically which means that no re-compiles are necessary for binaries. How's this on other platforms? /M -- Magnus Therning (OpenPGP: 0xAB4DFBA4) magnus@therning.org Jabber: magnus.therning@gmail.com http://therning.org/magnus Software is not manufactured, it is something you write and publish. Keep Europe free from software patents, we do not want censorship by patent law on written works. As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality. -- Albert Einstein
participants (4)
-
DavidA -
Duncan Coutts -
Magnus Therning -
Neil Mitchell