Re: Library proposal: Add System.Info.isWindows
On Thu, 2007-08-16 at 09:02 +0200, Ketil Malde wrote:
On Wed, 2007-08-15 at 16:49 +0100, Ian Lynagh wrote:
On Wed, Aug 15, 2007 at 03:40:56PM +0100, Neil Mitchell wrote:
By modifying your proposal ever so slightly (and probably as you intended anyway):
data OSFlavour = Linux | Windows | MacOS | BSD | Solaris | Other String deriving Eq
Seriously, I worry this will always be too coarse. What features are people actually using conditionally like this?
There are many examples in Cabal, almost all of them just distinguish windows vs non-windows and are for things like: * deciding what default installation directories to use * whether it is possible to make relocatable packages or not * how to generate the Paths_<pkg>.hs file (which has to FFI import some win32 functions on windows to implement relocatable packages). * It distinguishes for generating a sh shell script or a batch file for the register --gen-script feature * special logic to find some tools that are bundled with ghc in a subdir vs just looking on the path as normal Duncan
Hi
There are many examples in Cabal, almost all of them just distinguish windows vs non-windows
Perhaps this suggests that we should leave the full OS choice for a while, until we can pick "the right thing", and do exactly what my original proposal suggested - test for one single thing that is a very common pattern which people often get wrong. If the only reason for not just adding isWindows is "politics" then I think its clearly the only sensible choice :-) Thanks Neil
participants (2)
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Duncan Coutts -
Neil Mitchell