[darcs-users] OpenBSD users here?

[Simon Peyton-Jones]

Kili

| Sorry, but if the Haskell community backs on a main darcs repository
| that JUST DOES NOT WORK, and if the most important compiler DOES
| NOT CARE ABOUT PORTABILITY (I mean the HC bootstrapping, which has
| been pushed from milestone to milestone), then I'm not any longer
| interested at all.

I'm sorry that you've been having a bad time.

Concerning the repo, as you now know something was definitely broken and has now been fixed.  In general, if the repo server isn't working properly, we want to know about it. It's currently supported as a generous service by Galois. At some point, Haskell may become sufficiently successful that they can't sustain that, but my assumption at the moment is that problems are accidental rather than deliberate throttling.

Concerning portability, it's not true to say that we (GHC HQ now) don't care about portability.  We may give that impression, but if we do it's accidental.   In general, we focus most attention on the things that seem to be causing our users most trouble.  I don't think I'd absorbed that lots of people, or even you, have been frustrated about HC bootstrapping over an extended period.  Perhaps you have been too polite and quiet!

In any case, I'm hoping that John Dias's current work on the back end will mean that GHC becomes a cross-compiler, which will make portability a lot easier.  In the short term, if you or others are keen on making HC bootstrapping work properly again, please do say so and why, so that we can factor it into our plans.  (Simon M is away, so I don't know what he expects for GHC 6.10.)

best wishes

Simon