patc@cse.unsw.edu.au (Patrick Caldon) wrote:

I don't know how you update your web pages and so on, but I'd like to make a feature request (wish!) for support of all the standard haskell libraries. The couple of times I've tried using Hat this has been an issue. ST related libraries are the ones I really want.

Well, Hat does indeed support all the officially "standard" Haskell libraries, namely those defined by the Haskell'98 Report. It additionally supports many of the non-standard libraries contained in the hierarchical "base" package, but as you discovered, not all of them. There are good reasons why some (e.g. ST) are not supported - because they are not portable between compilers. However, there are plenty of newer non-standard libraries (e.g. Data.Queue) which are entirely portable, and we have no good excuse for failing to support them in Hat, except a lack of developer time to chase them up. In fact the real failure here is the lack of an easy mechanism for anyone to add a newer library into Hat's default set. Automation would make this so much less of a problem. But sadly, I do not forsee this happening in the near future.

Could you change the error message to read?

Data.Queue: Does not exist; check http://<something> for a list of supported libraries.

A great idea. Regards, Malcolm