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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Hello, everyone,<br>
<br>
I was just in the process of trying to get Haskell 7.6 installed.
First I surveyed all the current OSes that seemed to support it.
FreeBSD 9.1 seemed like a good candidate. However, FreeBSD 9.1
has many practical problems of its own. So far, I have 7.4
installed, but not 7.6. Would the MAC be better at this?
Anyway, it seems that much of Hackage will not be usable.
Perhaps I should just run it on Windows, as it seems likely to
install there and much of Hackage already didn't work there.<br>
<br>
I welcome any constructive suggestions.<br>
<br>
Best Regards,<br>
<br>
Byron Hale<br>
<br>
On 5/1/2013 10:27 PM, Adrian May wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote
cite="mid:CAD-UbzE3c0J-yDGar6EfYi2g77qY5z-t9oPH_U4_QjBebv4uoA@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">
<div>Hi All,</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Please don't interpret this as a rant: I'm just feeling a
bit disappointed about probably having to give up on Haskell. </div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Let's face it: this decision to change the default syntax
in GHC7 means that right now Haskell looks about as stable as
Ruby on Rails.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>I just tried to use Flippi. It broke because of the syntax
change so I tried WASH. I couldn't even install it because of
the syntax change. I persisted for a while but gave up because
getPackageId doesn't exist in any form at all anymore. This
was only the install script: what would WASH itself have in
store for me to get my brain around?</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>What are my choices here:</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>1) Revert to GHC6 or put pragmas and compiler switches
everywhere, switch 2010 off globally with cabal or even make
an alias of ghc: That means I'll gradually clash with people
who decide ...</div>
<div>2) Convert all my code and a lot of other peoples' to the
new syntax, thereby exacerbating the problem that ruled out 1.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Either way, we're looking at a long period during which a
large portion of the libraries will be incompatible with the
other portion, and nobody will know which style to write. I
don't know if or when WASH or any other library will convert,
or even if I'd prefer that to happen sooner or later, because
that would depend on when other libraries do and how I'd
worked around it in the meantime. Altogether that means I
can't sensibly decide to rely on any library, so I can't use
Haskell. I'll just have to go back to fumbling around in XSL,
PHP and the like. Is Haskell 2010 really so much better that
it justifies this?</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>I just saw that movie "The Words": the moral of the story
is that you shouldn't try to change your mistakes.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>...<br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Apparently it's not only 2010. I now find that buildng the
Haskell Platform wants GHC 7.4.2, not 7.4.1 because of the
line "import Prelude" (if I remember rightly,) and even when I
follow the rules precisely I still get several different
deprecation warnings. The prelude is not exactly obscure. If
you deprecate that you've broken everything. Is it really
impossible to keep such a basic mantra meaningful from one
minor version to the next? Java was fond of deprecating things
in the early days, but when they said "deprecated" they didn't
mean "switched off", let alone that it would lead to a syntax
error. They just meant "not trendy anymore."</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>It's a very common illusion to believe that the central
thing in your life is also the central thing in everybody
else's. That's why things like Norton take over your whole
machine: those guys believe that the only reason you bought
the computer was to fight viruses, because that's what most of
the machines in their office were bought for.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>There seems to be something similar going on in the way
Haskellers are expected to update all their code whenever GHC
decide to issue an update. But in reality we have jobs of our
own. I'd like to choose Haskell over XSL because I think it'll
enable me to write web sites more efficiently, not because I
want to forget all about my job and savour the brilliance of
the latest Haskell version. But in reality I'm just sitting
here waiting for the Platform to compile just in case it's the
Ubuntu package's fault, but I know it won't help. I'll just
get other problems instead. Reality is that the whole ecosytem
is in disarray because of this lack of respect for backward
compatibility. At least Rails can plead that it's relatively
new, but Haskell has been around for over 20 years.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>
<div>I understand that progress has to be made, and it would
be nice if people did just update all their code quickly so
you could switch off old stuff and move on. But it's not
hard to survey the code that's out there and see how much
stuff you'd be breaking if you did. If it's not a lot, then
switching it off to wake them up would be an acceptable
compromise. But it looks to me as if a lot of very important
stuff is still failing on the GHC from November 2010, so
clearly things are going too fast. Adding new stuff is
great, and sometimes the new stuff clashes with the old
stuff. But how much of that deprecated stuff really *needed*
to be switched off, and couldn't the new stuff have been
designed so as not to force that?</div>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>In principle this is the best language on the planet, but
with all these version gotchas I don't know that I can use it
anymore. What a tragedy. I can't even think of a suggestion as
to how Haskell should try to get out of this mess now.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div style="">Adrian.</div>
<div style=""><br>
</div>
<div style=""><br>
</div>
</div>
<br>
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