Hello Esa, Friday, July 6, 2007, 12:25:33 AM, you wrote:
i write a general-purpose program (archiver) and will prefer to have it win9x-compatible. btw, this doesn't have any relation to the fact that ghc itself can be run on old OSes
I realize that. Do you care about Win32 package or only about ghc rts and base? Could you find some resources to test on Win 9x?
i don't use Win32 package at all. i implemented my own file manipulation and i/o module because it was easiest way to provide uniform API for both Unix and Windows i proposed to develop file and i/o library which is platform-independent, utilize new NT features and still Win9x compatible (http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/Library/IO), but there is not enough resources to develop it
What do you think would be workable solution for Win32 package? I can think of few solutions * use old versions of Win32 package if you need Win9x compatibility (doesn't need extra work.) * Add new package with Win 2k APIs (but that's really annoying because of overlap) * Use CPP to make it possible to compile Win9x-compatible Win32 (need testers!)
i think that, regarding small interest to this theme, the best solution will be one that require less work. it's obvious that 9x support will become less and less popular and it's better to focus attention on new OSes. so, i think that minimal solution is the best with only one exception - there should be a way to use *both* old and new lib in project (in order to provide compatibility with both systems). so i propose the following: * clone existing library and rename one of copies to either win9x or winnt. rename modules in this library appropriately. continue development of one of these clones using NT features freely while another clone will remain stabilized at current set of features. if someone will ever want to backport features from new library to old one (because these particular features are also available on 9x), he can do it yourself -- Best regards, Bulat mailto:Bulat.Ziganshin@gmail.com