Mac Port

Wolfgang Thaller wolfgang.thaller@gmx.net
Sun, 1 Jun 2003 11:15:59 +0200


Seth Kurtzberg wrote:

> Is there, or is anyone working on, ports for Mac OSX and/or Mac OS9?

I'm currently responsible for the Mac OS X version of GHC. I'll upload 
a GHC 6.0 binary for Mac OS X binary as soon as possible, but I'm short 
on time and processor cycles, so it might take a few more days.
I could definitely use more people who regularily build GHC on MacOS X 
and do some testing, and alert me of any breakage _before_ I make a 
buggy release... I don't have the computing capacity to do nightly 
builds.

Mac OS 9 is a different story. GHC doesn't work on Mac OS 9, and it 
will probably stay that way:
*) There is no GCC that runs on Mac OS 9.
*) There is no GCC that cross-compiles to Mac OS 9.
... and the ABI is different from other PowerPC platforms, including 
Mac OS X.
*) Mac OS 9 doesn't support the POSIX API.
GHC's run time system and libraries require either Posix or Win32. A 
lot would have to be rewritten for Mac OS 9.
*) There's no unix-style shell on Mac OS 9
That means we have to cross-compile or use a completely different build 
system.
*) Mac OS 9 is obsolete
There are people using it now, and there will still be people who use 
it in the future, but by the time any port is finished, they will be 
very hard to find.

Cheers,

Wolfgang