August 2016 - Haskell-community

haskell.org download page
by Jason Dagit 20 Nov '16

20 Nov '16

Hello all, I just realized that the Minimal installer listed first on the Downloads page (https://www.haskell.org/downloads) is deprecated and "dead". This creates an unfortunate situation where our top suggested way to get haskell immediately tells the user it's dead. I think that we should remove mention of the minimal installer ASAP on the grounds that the HP now comes in minimal and full variants. Furthermore, I would like to make the recommendation that we list the HP above other methods as even the minimal HP installer ships with stack (at least on windows it does). Between the two changes, I think the first one is crucial and the second one is merely reasonable. Thanks, Jason

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Resignation
by Edward Kmett 01 Sep '16

01 Sep '16

I'm officially resigning from the haskell.org committee effective immediately after the end of the Summer of Haskell. To those of you on the committee, I apologize for abandoning you. The reason I joined and have remained on the committee for the past several years is entirely to deal with the needs of the Summer of Code, both financially and administratively. It has provided me a way to give back to a community that has been so incredibly good to me. When Galois managed our finances, someone had to deal with it. When we moved into SPI, it ironically started taking more effort. When we formed a non-profit in December things started looking up in terms of administrative overhead, but then we crushingly weren't accepted into the program this year. In the wake of that I was somehow able to raise funding and wrangle us around $40,000 in sponsorship to fund eight students to work on Haskell for the summer. The outpouring of goodwill there was tangible. Those projects are wrapping up nicely now. This part of my role within the committee has been as life affirming and wonderful as anything I've ever done. However, the job is coming at an ever greater personal cost that I'm simply unwilling to continue to bear. My wife has come to dread the "there's someone wrong on the internet" moments, and I've come to realize it isn't fair to her -- I simply find myself spread too thin. I shall continue to serve on the Core Libraries Committee, as I do continue to care deeply about the structure of the language we all love, if not so much the tooling around it, and I am willing to put in the time to on that front where I feel much more strongly about the issues at hand and have what I hope is a nuanced opinion to offer. Ultimately, the barbs thrown around, say, during the Foldable/Traversable Proposal, while heated, never felt personal, merely rational disagreement between well meaning parties with different priorities. I care a great deal about our community; it was ultimately Cale and the rest of the folks in #haskell channel that lured me in at first, not any of the technical merits of the language. Those only took hold of me later on, but without that comfortable environment never would have had a chance to set. I do not care enough about the contents of a web page to let my health, relationships, productivity and home life suffer further. I hope that by stepping back I can continue to retain or perhaps regain some of those friendships that recent events have strained. --Edward Kmett

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Re: [Haskell-community] haskell.org download page
by Paolo Giarrusso 30 Aug '16

30 Aug '16

On 30 August 2016 at 15:56, Steven J. Syrek <steven.syrek(a)gmail.com> wrote: > alias ghci="stack ghci" > > ? stack ghci translates to cabal repl which interprets your whole project. No biggie on small projects, but annoying on big ones. But the correct alias is closer to alias ghci='stack exec -- ghci' Though you *could* argue this is irrelevant to newbies. -- Paolo G. Giarrusso - Ph.D. Student, Tübingen University http://ps.informatik.uni-tuebingen.de/team/giarrusso/

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Is it reasonable to poll the community on this ML?
by Paolo Giarrusso 30 Aug '16

30 Aug '16

Replying to https://mail.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell-community/2016-August/000127.html (I can't reply properly otherwise as I just subscribed): > > 2) This really just boils down to the political gridlock between HP and > > Stack. Unless the actual parties involved in that gridlock can hammer out > > an actual decision directly, why have an obscure vote on an obscure mailing > > list? Such an act comes off as clandestine. > > As per: https://wiki.haskell.org/Haskell.org_committee the list serves > as a forum for the committee, which is the historical body in charge > of haskell.org and its subdomains, to discuss actions under its > purview with a broader group of interested people. > There is no polling > mechanism as such — the committee is empowered to act, but this forum > was created as a way to ensure that people had a single unified venue > to discuss publically such actions. > It was announced both to > haskell-cafe as well as the reddit at the time of its creation. If the poll was announced there, there would still be extra friction. But IIUC only the mailing list was announced there. > We > can’t expect committee members to follow discussions all over > reddit/twitter/etc nor can we expect such discussions to archive well > and uniformly so we have a future record. If you want to have a poll over a mailing list, what about e.g. haskell-cafe? Or naming any other place where more people have access? I might understand the concern about archiving, but haskell-cafe solves that. And "the committee can't be expected to follow discussions" and "is empowered to act" does sound like "the committee can't be expected to listen to the community". Cheers, -- Paolo G. Giarrusso - Ph.D. Student, Tübingen University http://ps.informatik.uni-tuebingen.de/team/giarrusso/

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HP Minimal+Stack issue on Windows
by Michael Snoyman 30 Aug '16

30 Aug '16

I had a niggling worry last night, and it turned out to be an actual issue, filed at: https://github.com/haskell/haskell-platform/issues/251 Note that this is a serious issue; it will make Stack essentially unusable for anyone using HP Minimal on Windows and trying to use GHC 8. Regardless of any other discussions around changing the download page, I'd request that this bug be resolved first. Not only will it cause user problems, but will potentially cause a significant maintenance burden for Stack (I heard from Stack maintainers in the past that a similar situation existed with GHC for Mac OS X shipping an old buggy Stack version). (Sorry if a duplicate, I mistakenly sent from the wrong address previously.)

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HP Minimal+Stack issue on Windows
by Michael Snoyman 30 Aug '16

30 Aug '16

I had a niggling worry last night, and it turned out to be an actual issue, filed at: https://github.com/haskell/haskell-platform/issues/251 Note that this is a serious issue; it will make Stack essentially unusable for anyone using HP Minimal on Windows and trying to use GHC 8. Regardless of any other discussions around changing the download page, I'd request that this bug be resolved first. Not only will it cause user problems, but will potentially cause a significant maintenance burden for Stack (I heard from Stack maintainers in the past that a similar situation existed with GHC for Mac OS X shipping an old buggy Stack version).

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Fwd: Mirroring on Google groups
by Paolo Giarrusso 29 Aug '16

29 Aug '16

Hi all, Haskell-cafe is mirrored on Google Groups at https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/haskell-cafe, as far as I can tell. That enables anybody to join that ML and participate in existing discussions. Would such mirroring be an option here too? Cheers, -- Paolo G. Giarrusso - Ph.D. Student, Tübingen University http://ps.informatik.uni-tuebingen.de/team/giarrusso/

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haskell.org download page
by Simon Marechal 29 Aug '16

29 Aug '16

(sorry for not answering to a previous message, I just subscribed). I think there should be a single option on the download page. The minimal HP seems OK to me, but I understand how not having control on the distribution of stack, while at the same time having to support it, could be a problem. So here is my 2c: * Have minimal HP be the only choice. I think this page is engaging and clear, and is a good example of what a beginner would like to see : https://haskell-lang.org/get-started * If at all possible, find a way to work with stack maintainers so that the HP stack install process matches that of the standalone tool.

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Re: [Haskell-community] haskell.org download page
by Yann Esposito (yogsototh) 29 Aug '16

29 Aug '16

As an Haskell user which had difficulties using previous HP version and as a now happy stack user I would really prefer to see stack at the top. I already told some of my friends to use stack to start learning Haskell. Just my 2c.

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re. haskell.org download page, the `evil cabal`, etc.
by Marco Zocca 29 Aug '16

29 Aug '16

Dear all, I wish `stack` were listed and highlighted as the preferred method of getting GHC + related tools on haskell.org . I find the tools and infrastructure developed by FP Complete to be robust and intuitive. This is _not_ to disparage all the good work that went into cabal-install and Hackage. Rather, the FPCo tools have been a net evolution. The technical merits are undeniable, and I can see in Mr Snoyman's remarks the concerns of a technology leader to remove all sources of error and friction. Even the `stack` packaged up with HP quickly becomes out of date. In general, we are witnessing the coming of age of the language, and the (slightly) different priorities (and modes of operation) faced by industrial and "casual" users. At the same time, I have a nagging wish such critical parts of Haskell weren't under direct control of a corporation, albeit one with such a transparent (and efficient!) open-source policy. I wish you all a good day with the hope we'll get back soon at discussing types rather than politics. Kind regards, Marco

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