On Sat, Nov 29, 2008 at 2:41 AM, John Meacham <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 28, 2008 at 07:41:42PM -0800, Don Stewart wrote: > > john: > > > On Wed, Nov 26, 2008 at 07:20:12PM -0800, Jason Dagit wrote: > > > > I spoke with the author of the fork a bit in IRC around the time it > happened > > > > and my understanding is that: > > > > 1) John sternly objects to using cabal as the build system for JHC > > > > > > This is a fairly silly reason to fork a project, especially jhc, for a > > > number of reasons. > > > > One of the reasons though, for the branching, is that the potential > > developers, who all have Haskell toolchains, couldn't do: > > > > $ cabal install jhc > > > > Then now can, but have to write 'lhc' instead of 'jhc'. > > > > We've probably just increased the jhc "alpha user" base 10 fold. Hooray! > > Except that for all those systems that can use cabal, ./configure && > make install would have already worked perfectly. So in actuality my > alpha user base drops 50-fold. > > Also, I am not so sure who these people are who are willing to type 10 > characters to try out jhc, but not a dozen more. I mean, a few typos and > there won't be enough keystrokes in their budget to compile hello world, > let alone provide a bug report or send a patch :) > > > I think you are overestimating the penetration of cabal or > underestimating the size and diversity of the haskell user base. There > are a whole lot of people out there who just want to use haskell and > don't keep up with the IRC channels or the mailing lists. Grad students > interested in some aspect of jhcs design who did apt-get install ghc > and then expect jhc to work. Sysadmins who manage clusters of computers > for work but have no particular attachement to haskell whose kickstart > scripts allow just dropping in an autoconfed tarball but have to be > retooled for something new? > > > > Integrating into the ecology of the vast majority of Haskell code is a > > good way to get and keep developers. And since GHC -- which we need to > > build JHC anyway -- already ships with Cabal, no additional dependencies > > are required. > > But wouldn't it be nicer if Haskell fit into the ecology of OSS in > general? Even better wouldn't it be nice if peoples first impression of > haskell was not annoyance at having to build a package in some > proprietary way , but rather being impressed with some piece of software > and looking into its implementation and seeing how it got to be so good? > No one when just trying to install a random program not knowing anything > about the implementation gets excited at seeing that they have to learn > some brand new way of getting it to work. > > For a standalone program like jhc, integrating with the open source > community as a whole, and having the flexibility of working with the > right tool for the task at hand are very desirable things. > > When it comes down to it, an actual reason to use cabal is not there, If > the reason is to fit into the ecology of Haskell code, then my question > is why is this ecology so distinct to begin with? What is wrong with > haskell such that its world must be so disjoint from that of other > languages? That seems to be the real WTF here that needs fixing. When it comes down to it, I've just been down a slippery slope. The fact is, hackage works and hackage is a good reason to support cabal. I'd also so say this thread is no longer productive. A fork happened, the fork embraces cabal but jhc does not need to embrace cabal; end of story really. We all get what we want. Thanks, Jason
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