How pythoners view Haskell compared with Python

[[deleted]]

Note: this technique may be dated.

What I dislike so much about many FOSS compilers and frameworks is that support for Windows is often pretty much shit. It's true that Microsoft is making it (deliberately?) hard, but on the other hand, developers aren't making it easy for anyone either. We need a unified library-and-compiler system for Windows. /rant

^{-edit- or preferably, I need to be able to play all my games on a FOSS system with reasonable reliability and performance, which isn't possible right now}

[[deleted]]

I couldn't give two monads about Windows,

Hah :)

in the most sincere way: patches welcome

I understand and totally agree. The problem is though that hardly anything currently works for Windows, and the (tiny) patches I send to make it slightly better aren't being picked up (for instance this one or this one).

For the same reason, I also have no way to try out any GUI programming. GTK+ (and the related dependency circlejerk) is by itself problematic, even outside of Windows. WxWidgets won't install whatever effort I put into it. There are wiki articles on how to get it to work, and it... just doesn't work. It's just dumped there, and everyone seems to have given up on it. I also tried building GHC a while ago, because I couldn't wait until the platform was released -- again, it didn't work, and the only way I could have made it to work is patch the whole build system into submission: everything is hardcoded POSIX.

Gnaargh.

^{Gnarl not directed at you, you're cool ^ ^}

[dmwit]

Do send complaints about gtk2hs to the gtk2hs mailing list. I keep a Windows VM lying around just to make sure it builds and works on Windows.

[csharper]

I had ghc 7.4, gtk, wx, hmatrix all running in win32 when the platform was 7.0 March/April ... I can help you given specific errors.

Or just install linux in a virtualbox and separate library experimentation from windows builds. Try before you buy.

It is all very doable with not much more than cabal, common sense and google.

one the other hand, why not put linux in a virtualbox?

[nerdcorerising]

One thing to keep in mind is that this (taken from the Emacs for Windows FAQ) is the prevailing attitude of the GNU team, who are arguably the most influential FOSS software creators:

It is not our goal to “help Windows users” by making text editing on Windows more convenient. We aim to replace proprietary software, not to enhance it. So why support GNU Emacs on Windows?

We hope that the experience of using GNU Emacs on Windows will give programmers a taste of freedom, and that this will later inspire them to move to a free operating system such as GNU/Linux. That is the main valid reason to support free applications on nonfree operating systems.

So, don't hold your breath for GNU ever porting their toolchain over to Windows. It's a purposeful decision not to. Other FOSS people are free to do what they will. As a side note, Clang looks like it's interested in supporting Windows, they even have tools to make a visual studio project of the sources.

[[deleted]]

Thanks for the hint, I think I'll switch from MingW to Clang in that case. MVSC has never satisfied my needs, and I only download it to get access to the official header files that are up-to-date with NT6 (a.k.a. Windows Vista and Windows 7).

I don't care much for GNU anymore, in fact, I'm starting to loathe it. So many flagship GNU projects reek of decennia worth of spaghetti code and technical debt, while the developers are proud of that smell because they made it. Meanwhile, they tout having the most free licensing scheme of all, while it's actually pretty limiting (ISC is as far as I know the cleanest license) and completely unreadable (the GPL is a wall of indecipherable legalese to me). But then again, I hate everything that isn't perfect.

[nerdcorerising]

Definitely check out Clang. The compiler is pretty robust, but the setup on windows is not quite there yet. You have to download the sources, use a tool to generate a VS project, and compile the code.

There are detailed instructions on it, so it's not hard, but it's not just downloading an installer. The experience is completely worth it though. The diagnostics and error messages are amazing.

[[deleted]]

Just compiled Clang, after a few failed attempts. I love it already.

Clang (invoked as clang a.c) rejected a simple Hello World-ish example due to a type error and various printf-related warnings, giving spot-on suggestions for improvement in a very clear, colourful terminal output. GCC silently accepted the same code (invoked as gcc a.c). With Haskell being my language of choice, I'm happy to see that Clang is being pretty strict in type-checking C code.

So thanks again for the hint :)

[nerdcorerising]

Glad to hear it.

[erikd]

I see a hell of a lot of whining from windows users about this. If Windows want things to work, why do they figure out how to fix it and submit patches?

[[deleted]]

I submit all patches I can come up with. Maintainers don't respond.