and there shouldn't be any problem with us just pulling it into the current Posix library for the time being.
Sounds fine to me. Do you mean dropping it into "libraries/base/GHC/Posix.hs"?
I would drop the file into the tree as hslibs/posix/POpen.hs for now, and export popen and popenEnvDir from Posix.
Btw is most of hslibs expected to go into libraries? How about all the posix stuff?
The plan is to migrate everything useful from hslibs into libraries eventually. Deprecated functionality and old interfaces are being left behind, and someday we'll ship GHC without hslibs at all. Hugs is also going to move to using the contents of fptools/libraries for its base libraries soon. As regards the Posix library, I think we need a redesigned library that supports more of IEEE 1003.1-2001 (the latest incarnation of POSIX including all the extra bits from the Single Unix Spec). It certainly needs to be completely re-implemented: the current Posix library uses all kinds of old GHC features and libraries that we'd like to remove.
Yes, that's ok. Should I send you a new version with the header updated, or?
That would be great, thanks. Cheers, Simon