On 12/15/06, Tomasz Zielonka wrote:

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The Haskell web server that Simon Peyton-Jones et al described in their paper would be a great example. But where's the download?

Let me stress this: HWS is an *exception*. It's the only Haskell related thing that I had trouble to find.

This is the only thing I disagree with in your post. I've had at least one of the following questions/problems with all of the libraries/tools that I'm about to list. I'd say some of the questions are normal and expected regardless of language choice but I mention them here because in the case of Haskell it was significantly a problem compared to what I'm used to: Problems: * finding which version is "current" * where is the documentation * is it still maintained * is this what people are actually using or was it just a proof of concept * where are the tutorials (research papers don't count) * how does it compare with the version commonly found in "mainstream" languages Libraries: * H/Direct * HOpenGL * HaXML vs. HXT * .NET interoperability? * HDBC * QuickCheck * TH Those are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head. With the exception of HOpenGL I've looked at them with the intention of using them at work where I do windows application development. I now know that most of them have some information I can get from the haskell wiki assuming I search long enough (for some reason the wiki search and google don't find the relevant wiki pages very often when I search). In many cases I end up at the tool/library website and many of my questions are still unanswered. I've now started reading the research papers when I don't immediately see the information I want to know, but a research paper is not what "industry" types want to look at when they want to know how to write QuickCheck properties (as an example). With a few of the listed libraries I resorted to reading the code to find out what I wanted to know. That's a nice fall back but it shouldn't be the normal way to learn about libraries. The best source of info I've found when trying to pick a library is to ask in #haskell on freenode. Some of the problems I've had are quite silly in some sense. As in the case of HOpenGL. With HOpenGL the documentation can be found and even some extensive PDFs detailing how to use it. But as anyone who has played with HOpenGL can tell you, those long PDFs contain many errors about the exact names of functions (I suspect the library has evolved since the PDF was written) and HOpenGL is quite different than OpenGL in terms of function names. This is partly why I created my ne-he tutorial conversion. So that people would have working example code to play with when they want to start learning HOpenGL. Jason

Hi, I don't answer specific previous line of mail but just give my opinion :) As with any non-mainstream or young language, there's some kind of lack of libraries/tools/whatever. With the arrival of Java, people get used to have scores of libraries which are 'right there', just 'part' of the java api. (Just google for any "java <class-name>" and 1/ you will find the approriate doc on sun's site and 2/ well, there's no number 2 : the library is already availble on your machine). The problem is the same with other languages. I talk especially of the problem of finding last version of a lib, installing it, finding/reading the doc. But the problem is quite cosmetic. There *are* libs. I don't know Cabal. Maybe such a tool has to enforce or encourage the lib author to package it carefully. Maybe such a tool could be used with a haskell.org-side server app to provide the relevent information to the user and cache the lib if it's author is erased from the map. If the haskell community has the tool, I'm sure every member of the community will use it. (the problem with tool adoption is another point). (I found the idea on the wiki of 'how to start a haskell project' has the same merit.) Well. Don't bother with 'building the community' or 'spread the word'. People on this mailing list have needs which are quite the same than the ones that will make the two 'goals' happen. Or in other words : I see a lot of thread about 'building ...' and 'spread ..' but the fact is : the community is building up itself and does it quite right. Ciao, mt

On 12/15/06, Jason Dagit wrote:

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The Haskell web server that Simon Peyton-Jones et al described in

On 12/15/06, Tomasz Zielonka wrote: their

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...

paper would be a great example. But where's the download?

Let me stress this: HWS is an *exception*. It's the only Haskell related thing that I had trouble to find.

This is the only thing I disagree with in your post.

As someone learning about Haskell while working in "industry", I second the concerns expressed here. My particular case involves the variety of "functional reactive programming" libraries and papers out there. After reading Hudak's School of Expression, I first tried to download the code referenced in the book. It was pretty stale but someone did the nice work of making sure Hugs still has a version of the original library that matches the SOE source. Sort of - once I figured out a few key module changes it was no big deal. I've tried to look at other libraries, FRAP and Yampl, but found them both stale and hard to figure out how to install. The Haskell community might take a page from the Ruby book here and look at the "Ruby Gems" package distribution system. It makes install new ruby libraries and applications as simple as a single command. For example, to install rails you just type: gem install rails And all the source for the latest released Ruby on Rails is downloaded and installed on your machine, ready to use. Haskell's compiled nature might make that a bit more difficult but its still pretty awesome and definiltey the preferred way of getting libraries out in Ruby community. If you don't believe me, search the google group "comp.lang.ruby" for emails with "[ANN]" in the header and you'll see most are distributed via gems.

John Meacham schrieb:

I think we need some sort of signal, to show that one means "I understand why haskell doesn't allow this in general, but am interested in a compiler specific trick or some theoretical background on the issue" rather than "I am learning haskell and am somewhat confused due to preconcieved notions fostered by my experience with other languages, can someone help me?"

The usual answer to this kind of problem is splitting up the forums. E.g. a haskell-learners list for those who should be saying "I'm learning Haskell", a haskell-tricks one for the more esoteric (high-level, whatyanameit) stuff. Possibly haskell-libraries for library announcements and questions of the form "where do I find the library for doing foobar". Just my 2c. There may be better courses of action (or non-action). Regards, Jo