Re: [wxhaskell-users] Haskell Platform

[Jeremy O'D. <jer...@gm...>]

[x-posting wxhaskell-devel]

On 12 June 2011 18:43, Guy <guy...@ya...> wrote:

> On 12/06/2011 20:07, Eric Y. Kow wrote:
> > On Sun, Jun 12, 2011 at 19:54:13 +0300, Guy wrote:
> >> I'm trying to get a GUI package included in the Haskell Platform. The
> >> platform's inclusion policy requires that (one
> >> of?) the package's official maintainers supports the proposal.
>

The sad reality (and I suspect it may apply equally to Gtk2HS) is that there
isn't a large enough core team maintaining wxHaskell to commit to Haskell
Platform. I am nowhere near being able to give the time needed to support
such an effort.

As a guess, it would require a fairly committed(*) core team of about 6
people, including at least one on each of the major platforms (Windows,
Linux, Mac).

(*) for the avoidance of doubt, "able to commit a few hours per week on a
reasonably long-term basis".


> > We may need to think strategically about this.
>

The main areas where we have problems are:

   - Robust support for GHCi, working on all platforms (currently works on
   none!)
   - Straightforward to install on all platforms (currently probably easiest
   on Windows, and not reliably functioning on 'built-in' versions of
   wxWidgets)
   - Documented mechanism/approach to wrapping new parts of wxWidgets APIs
   (this probably isn't a show-stopper for HP inclusion)

>
> > gtk2hs is much more popular than wxHaskell, and by and large coders
> > seem not to be particularly concerned about getting as close to native
> > UI as possible (and they'll just point out that you can't anyway).
>

True, but the reality is that whatever gets included in HP will become the
de-facto Haskell GUI, and will edge the alternatives out fairly quickly. I'd
love this to be wxHaskell, but I really don't have the bandwidth to make it
happen.