[darcs-users] choice of language (was Re: darcs issues)

[Bennett Todd]

I predict one of three things will happen.

1. ghc will be made easier to port. This might be very easy; there's
   some cryptic weirdness in the convoluted build/install machinery
   that prevents installing an "unregistered" build, but they're way
   easier to get working than "registered" builds on even slightly
   varient platforms.

2. darcs will be adapted to some less hard-to-port language. Maybe
   portable across Haskell dialects might be enough, I've not looked
   at porting nhc yet. Maybe an alternative implementation in some
   other language. Heck, maybe a standalone C version could be
   created starting from the C output of ghc; once darcs hits a
   stable plateau with no urgent changes expected in a while that
   might be worth playing with.

3. darcs will remain limited to only mainstream platforms, and a
   certain subset of potential users will be put off by that.

I don't actually see any catastrophes anywhere in there:-).

I've looked into this since I maintain a Linux distro which, aside
from darcs, is entirely and completely self-hosting, bootstrapped.
It uses uClibc and solely static linking, no dynamic libs or loading
at all. Most packages build effortlessly, some (perl, e.g.) require
a bit of strong-arming. So far I've failed to "port" ghc to this
platform. At the moment I'm using the statically-linked darcs
executable that the kind folks at CarpetCode offer.

-Bennett
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