Problems with compilation all of the fptools...

[Malcolm Wallace]

Ron de Bruijn <rondebruijn at yahoo.com> writes:

> So the million dollar question is: why is it so hard
> to keep up with newer versions of gcc (and are there
> any plans to support the newer versions)?

Gcc's C -pre-processor is becoming much stricter about what it will
accept.  Even in -traditional mode, input must conform much more
closely to the C lexical syntax than before, which is not necessarily
a good match to the Haskell lexical syntax.

> P.S. Why are C macro's used in the first place? Can't
> they be replaced by a Haskell implementation (so that
> things don't break)? 

There are lots of valid reasons for using a pre-processor for Haskell
source code, discussed at length on the libraries at haskell.org list.
The fact that gcc's cpp is becoming less useful as a default
implementation was the main reason for developing cpphs as a drop-in
replacement.  Perhaps ghc will adopt cpphs in a future release.

Regards,
    Malcolm