[darcs-users] retiring GHC 6.6 support after darcs 2.3 (2009-07)

[Matthias Kilian]

Hi,

On Sun, Feb 15, 2009 at 08:42:46PM +0000, Eric Kow wrote:
> > Didn't you that by depending on haskeline? At least I couldn't build
> > haskeline with ghc-6.6 on openbsd.
> 
> Actually, the Haskeline dependency still hasn't made it in yet because
> of the trouble folks had installing haskeline.  Judah is still working
> on it.  For what it's worth, I managed to install haskeline on ghc-6.6
> on Ubuntu, although I think I was using a cabal-install binary built
> with ghc 6.10.

One requirement for openbsd packages is that they can be built from
source if possible. Of course, I could provide a precompiled haskeline
package built with ghc-6.10, but I would feel very dirty ;-)

> Could you report any trouble on
>   http://trac.haskell.org/haskeline/wiki
> ?

I first have to try to build it. Once with ghc-6.10 (or -HEAD), and
then try to tweak it to build with ghc-6.6.

> This is one area where I messed up by being too eager.  I simply had
> not anticipated the platform support issues that would arise.  Judah:
> would it make sense to wait till darcs 2.3 for Haskeline to be the
> default, or should we press ahead?

Please: whatever your plans are, and whatever makes you feel
comfortable, don't let you beeing stopped because of the openbsd
problems.

> > > Good?
> > 
> > Not so good for openbsd, but that's not your fault.
> 
> Hmm, is a later version of GHC not available for OpenBSD?

Kind of. ghc-6.10 (and -HEAD) can be built from the ghc-6.6 we've
currently in our ports tree. But the problem is that ghc-6.6 was
the last version that can be bootstrapped without a preinstalled
ghc. I could provide precompiled binaries here, too, but I'd feel
even more dirty.

We have some plans to fix this, either by repairing ghc bootstrapping
(the ghc people started to work on it, and i really hope to find
some time soon to step in), or, if all else fails, by maintaining
two versions of ghc in our ports tree. The biggest problem is lack
of time for both Jona Joachim (who helped worked on the second
approach) and me.

But again: don't defer any decisions on darcs because of this. Even
if there will be no official packages of newer ghc and darcs versions
in the next openbsd release, people could always build this stuff
outside of our ports infrastructure.

Ciao,
	Kili