[Nix-dev] Haskell Platform, anyone?

[Mateusz Kowalczyk]

On 11/07/2014 07:11 PM, Peter Simons wrote:
> Hi guys,
> 
> Haskell Platform 2014.2.0.0 has been released a while ago, and I can't
> help noticing that no-one seems to be in a hurry to add that to Nixpkgs.
> Apparently, there not much of a demand for Haskell Platform in Nix?
> 
> This makes me wonder about the old HP releases that we still have:
> 2009.2.0.2, 2010.1.0.0, 2010.2.0.0, 2011.2.0.0, 2011.2.0.1, 2011.4.0.0,
> 2012.2.0.0, 2012.4.0.0, and 2013.2.0.0.
> 
> All of those builds were pretty much non-functional until recently
> because none of them actually installed a compiler into the user
> profile, but no-one noticed that for a period of several months.
> 
> Having those old versions around forces us to keep ancient versions of
> many HP member packages like HTTP, mtl, vector, etc., too, and that adds
> a bit of complexity to Nixpkgs. Since no-one seems to *use* that stuff,
> I'm tempted to say that we should drop support for Haskell Platform
> altogether and to throw out all these ancient package versions in the
> process.
> 
> How do others feel about that? Do you desperately want to be able to
> install Haskell Platform 2010.2.0.0 any time soon?
> 
> Best regards,
> Peter
> 

I think the only reason why anyone using nix would want HP is to make
sure their program compiles using it. I think HP 2014 is just not
popular enough yet to be targeted. There's always Travis CI and whatnot
for double-checking I guess.

We probably could just drop it: if someone wants to still use it, they
can revive it from git and/or pin the versions themselves.

I do think it might be worthwhile to provide HP 2014 eventually, but
only ‘in spirit’: pin library versions as they appear in the HP rather
than trying to build their official package. Maybe that's what's done
already for older versions, I haven't checked.

-- 
Mateusz K.