Most popular libraries not in the HP

[briand at aracnet.com]

On Sat, 17 Jul 2010 12:49:25 -0700
Don Stewart <dons at galois.com> wrote:

> briand:
> > On Sat, 17 Jul 2010 16:56:23 +0200
> > Axel Simon <Axel.Simon at in.tum.de> wrote:
> > 
> > > 
> > > As far as I can see, there is a gradual overhead of C libraries  
> > > involved here. The Platform could ship the following subsets of
> > > Gtk2Hs:
> > > 
> > > cairo
> > > cairo+glib+pango
> > > cairo+glib+pango+gio
> > > cairo+glib+pango+gio+gtk
> > > 
> > > It's a question of how big the tar ball is and how much work it is
> > > to bundle the C libraries with the Platform.
> > > 
> > > Cheers,
> > 
> > That's why I voted for including just cairo.
> > 
> > it's low overhead, high quality and gives your haskell install
> > access to cross-platform graphics capability.
> > _______________________________________________
> 
> We wouldn't bundle the C source (as we don't e.g. for GL or Regex.c
> currently)

I understand, but you only need libcairo and some sort of -dev version
of libcairo.

as you start to lump stuff on top of it, then there's more to
install, and you can easily end up in dependency hell where things
won't install because of some annoying dependency.

For example, the cabal version of gtk2hs installed very smoothly but I
think I had to install 2 cabal packages and at least 4 -dev system libs
before I was done.

really, access to screen graphics of some sort is a wishlist item.

Another option would be to include something that generates postscript
output only.  The nice thing about cairo is that it will do that in
addition to giving you a screen display should you desire, and all with
the same code :-)

Brian