4 ms·

The Haskell Platform: a single, standard Haskell distribution for every system

34 points by jlhamilton 17y ago

sandGorgon 17y ago
now... lisp.. if only
- mahmud 17y ago
  [Edit: I'm an idiot. This is a "batteries included" Haskell. If only Lisp, indeed] CLISP + Emacs and slime is pretty much universal, almost to a fault.
  - jrockway 17y ago
    Wait, who uses CLISP? Most Lisp applications included with my OS use GCL, and I personally use SBCL. It also seems like most libraries support SBCL, sometimes exclusively.
    - mahmud 17y ago
      .. on win32? I use sbcl on win32 and it does most things almost right. Just not all. At least CLISP doesn't half-run them.
- whacked_new 17y ago
  Off topic question: Can somebody explain to me whether there is a semantic difference between "..." and ".." above? I find this a baffling construction, moreso because both happen within the span of two words, but at the same time it seems unimaginable that it is an unintentional omission, because the cognitive load of typing out "..." is a one-time retrieval + motor command and should be automatized. On the other hand, if the omission is a mistake then it means that it isn't automatized and there should be a reason for that as well. It is also possible that it is actually a formal punctuation mark in another language, which leads to comparable and competing access times with "...", in which case I have no knowledge. If the ".." has indeed acquired actual, independent semantic significance it must be recent and I cannot find it; what would it be?
  - marcusbooster 17y ago
    I read it as a trailing thought. Keyboards don't give us much expressiveness, but we make do. :P
    - whacked_new 17y ago
      I see. Is this the commonly-accepted interpretation? What does the normal ellipsis mean then? I use it as a trailing thought as well -- or, is it trailing speech? spoken: now... [pause] spoken: lisp .. [thought...?] thought: if only ?
      - sandGorgon 17y ago
        wow. I never thought a comment of mine would be tokenized. But, I guess your parsing was spot on ...
gaius 17y ago
No DB interface included, not even ODBC. Team Haskell doesn't seem to understand (or care) what a barrier this is to mainstream adoption. (Yes I know about HSQL but it's not exactly "batteries included" is it - compare Haskell to Python in this case)
- ionfish 17y ago
  "Future releases of the platform will include more tools and libraries to meet developer need." In other words, tell the Platform team it's needed, and get other people to do the same. Even better, write the database interface you'd like to use and push them to adopt it.
- dons 17y ago
  We didn't want to make any controversial decisions on behalf of the community in the first release. For subsequent major releases will will have a community-based decision procedure for what new stuff to add. See http://blog.well-typed.com/2009/05/next-steps-for-the-haskell-platform/ http://blog.well-typed.com/2009/05/next-steps-for-the-haskel... You'd have to lobby for say, sqlite or hdbc or gtk2hs etc. Snoop around on hackage.
  - knightrider 17y ago
    lol pwnd
- chancho 17y ago
  The single most important element of this package is the cabal-install tool. "cabal install HDBC" or "cabal install hsql" etc. will download, compile and install any library on hackage. Previously you had to 'bootstrap' cabal-install yourself, which wasn't a big deal for experienced users but was an annoyingly significant barrier for newcomers.
  - ionfish 17y ago
    While I agree unreservedly with this, it's probably worth pointing out for the benefit of those who haven't gone through the process themselves that bootstrapping cabal-install is a five-minute job (or less, depending on how many dependencies you need to compile). The barrier is that one needs to look up the instructions, and know that one should be looking looking something up, rather than it being in any way difficult or complex. http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/Cabal-Install http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/Cabal-Install
whacked_new 17y ago
Clever, clever logo :)
ggchappell 17y ago
> The Haskell Platform is a blessed library and tool suite for Haskell, .... Can someone explain what "blessed" means, in this context?
jamesbritt 17y ago
This install 6.10.2, right? I grabbed the generic source installer bundle. When I run ./configure, it tells me configure: error: The Haskell Platform version 2009.2.0 requires ghc-6.10.2 The requirement to have a working GHC in order to get a working GHC, while interesting, seems a perplexing roadblock. But extra puzzling is the requirement to have already the same version of GHC that this is supposed to be installing. What sense does this make? I really like Haskell from what I've seen so far, but every time I try to explore something that requires more than one or two packages it feels like a test of cunning, will power, and patience to get all the right pieces and version in place. (BTW, I have GHC 6.11.20090501 installed via darcs source. Apparently this is not enough: ./configure --enable-unsupported-ghc-version ... [much stuff] ... checking for GL/glut.h... no configure: error: The GLUT C library is required :( I appreciate the effort and the ambition, but it's still too tricky.

34 points by jlhamilton 17y ago

sandGorgon 17y ago

now... lisp.. if only

mahmud 17y ago
[Edit: I'm an idiot. This is a "batteries included" Haskell. If only Lisp, indeed] CLISP + Emacs and slime is pretty much universal, almost to a fault.
- jrockway 17y ago
  Wait, who uses CLISP? Most Lisp applications included with my OS use GCL, and I personally use SBCL. It also seems like most libraries support SBCL, sometimes exclusively.
  - mahmud 17y ago
    .. on win32? I use sbcl on win32 and it does most things almost right. Just not all. At least CLISP doesn't half-run them.
whacked_new 17y ago
Off topic question: Can somebody explain to me whether there is a semantic difference between "..." and ".." above? I find this a baffling construction, moreso because both happen within the span of two words, but at the same time it seems unimaginable that it is an unintentional omission, because the cognitive load of typing out "..." is a one-time retrieval + motor command and should be automatized. On the other hand, if the omission is a mistake then it means that it isn't automatized and there should be a reason for that as well. It is also possible that it is actually a formal punctuation mark in another language, which leads to comparable and competing access times with "...", in which case I have no knowledge. If the ".." has indeed acquired actual, independent semantic significance it must be recent and I cannot find it; what would it be?
- marcusbooster 17y ago
  I read it as a trailing thought. Keyboards don't give us much expressiveness, but we make do. :P
  - whacked_new 17y ago
    I see. Is this the commonly-accepted interpretation? What does the normal ellipsis mean then? I use it as a trailing thought as well -- or, is it trailing speech? spoken: now... [pause] spoken: lisp .. [thought...?] thought: if only ?
    - sandGorgon 17y ago
      wow. I never thought a comment of mine would be tokenized. But, I guess your parsing was spot on ...

gaius 17y ago

No DB interface included, not even ODBC. Team Haskell doesn't seem to understand (or care) what a barrier this is to mainstream adoption. (Yes I know about HSQL but it's not exactly "batteries included" is it - compare Haskell to Python in this case)

ionfish 17y ago
"Future releases of the platform will include more tools and libraries to meet developer need." In other words, tell the Platform team it's needed, and get other people to do the same. Even better, write the database interface you'd like to use and push them to adopt it.
dons 17y ago
We didn't want to make any controversial decisions on behalf of the community in the first release. For subsequent major releases will will have a community-based decision procedure for what new stuff to add. See http://blog.well-typed.com/2009/05/next-steps-for-the-haskell-platform/ http://blog.well-typed.com/2009/05/next-steps-for-the-haskel... You'd have to lobby for say, sqlite or hdbc or gtk2hs etc. Snoop around on hackage.
- knightrider 17y ago
  lol pwnd
chancho 17y ago
The single most important element of this package is the cabal-install tool. "cabal install HDBC" or "cabal install hsql" etc. will download, compile and install any library on hackage. Previously you had to 'bootstrap' cabal-install yourself, which wasn't a big deal for experienced users but was an annoyingly significant barrier for newcomers.
- ionfish 17y ago
  While I agree unreservedly with this, it's probably worth pointing out for the benefit of those who haven't gone through the process themselves that bootstrapping cabal-install is a five-minute job (or less, depending on how many dependencies you need to compile). The barrier is that one needs to look up the instructions, and know that one should be looking looking something up, rather than it being in any way difficult or complex. http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/Cabal-Install http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/Cabal-Install

whacked_new 17y ago

Clever, clever logo :)

ggchappell 17y ago

> The Haskell Platform is a blessed library and tool suite for Haskell, .... Can someone explain what "blessed" means, in this context?

jamesbritt 17y ago

This install 6.10.2, right? I grabbed the generic source installer bundle. When I run ./configure, it tells me configure: error: The Haskell Platform version 2009.2.0 requires ghc-6.10.2 The requirement to have a working GHC in order to get a working GHC, while interesting, seems a perplexing roadblock. But extra puzzling is the requirement to have already the same version of GHC that this is supposed to be installing. What sense does this make? I really like Haskell from what I've seen so far, but every time I try to explore something that requires more than one or two packages it feels like a test of cunning, will power, and patience to get all the right pieces and version in place. (BTW, I have GHC 6.11.20090501 installed via darcs source. Apparently this is not enough: ./configure --enable-unsupported-ghc-version ... [much stuff] ... checking for GL/glut.h... no configure: error: The GLUT C library is required :( I appreciate the effort and the ambition, but it's still too tricky.