[wxhaskell-devel] Grief in building wxHaskell - a constructive approach

[Andrew B. <and...@cs...>]

Hi,
 as some of you may know, I have been using wxHaskell for a project
of mine for quite a while - but I'm stuck in the dark ages:
ghc 6.10.4, wxMSW 2.8.10 wx 0.11.1.2-0

Being able to run from ghci (even just the once) is essential for me.

Occasionally I pop up on the users list and complain about the difficulty
in building something new and exciting (like ghc 7.0.3. and wx 0.9)
as happened yesterday.

Rather than occasionally beating up on you guys, I'd like to help 
in some way - but I'm not a hardcore software developer - I prefer
(as I suspect do we all) to work with Haskell in GHCi developing
nice programs that just build and run (the only flags in sight
are -fglasgow-exts -package wx ). As a day job I am an academic so
don't actually have to write any code that works or can be delivered to anyone.

So - I don't have any deep experience in gcc/makefile building,
or the complexities of cabal, or multiple architectures.

What I do find frustrating is the lack of clear instructions for someone
of my lack of such hardcore development experience for the installation
of wxHaskell. 

What I am suggesting is that I help to develop those instructions by
(1) cleaning up the dross leftover from previous attempts
(2) Following them carefully (keeping a diary)
    and adding feedback on the instructions to the wiki (using the Discussion facility)
(3) Updating the wiki once some consensus on revised instructions have been reached
   
Does this seem reasonable to you guys?  



I propose starting with the WxHaskell/Windows process first...


PS  Eric, - I had this email composed and ready to go just before your reply
to me on wxhaskell-users !


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Andrew Butterfield     Tel: +353-1-896-2517     Fax: +353-1-677-2204
Lero@TCD, Head of Foundations & Methods Research Group
Director of Teaching and Learning - Undergraduate,
School of Computer Science and Statistics,
Room G.39, O'Reilly Institute, Trinity College, University of Dublin
                          http://www.scss.tcd.ie/Andrew.Butterfield/
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