Haskell & Rust Team on recent stable releases of compilers

Haskell & Rust Team on recent stable releases of compilers

[Divya]

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Hello Guix Devs,

I've been using Guix for the last few months. As a Haskell programmer, I realized the latest stable that's available in the guix package repository is 9.2.8 which is _really_ old, considering that the current stable releases are at least older than 9.6.x.

I'd like to contribute to this if I can, since I myself would like to have the latest GHC for my uses.  So, how can I get the latest versions available? Do I need to add every release, or can I just add the most latest?

Also, is the process of adding a GHC release, or any Haskell package any different from the typical procedure to add a package? I'd like some introductory guidance/resources to learn that.

The same is true for rustc, the latest stable release is not updated. I'd like to help with that, if possible.

Let me know with how to proceed, and if there's anything I need to be aware of. Regarding copyright assignment, I've already started the paperwork by emailing the form to assign@gnu.org. I did it through Emacs, but I believe I don't need to do it again? Some guidance for that would also be helpful.

Regards,

Divya Ranjan,
Philosophy, Mathematics and Libre Software


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Re: Haskell & Rust Team on recent stable releases of compilers

[Andreas Enge]

Hello Divya,

I would like to only reply to your last point:

Am Mon, Oct 21, 2024 at 02:50:43PM +0000 schrieb Divya:
> Regarding copyright assignment, I've already started the paperwork by emailing
> the form to assign@gnu.org. I did it through Emacs, but I believe I don't need
> to do it again? Some guidance for that would also be helpful.

No need to assign copyright for work on Guix, we keep the individual
contributors.

But I may as well comment on the other ones and have myself corrected by more
knowlegeable people from the corresponding teams.

> I've been using Guix for the last few months. As a Haskell programmer, I
> realized the latest stable that's available in the guix package repository is
> 9.2.8 which is _really_ old, considering that the current stable releases are
> at least older than 9.6.x.
> 
> I'd like to contribute to this if I can, since I myself would like to have the
> latest GHC for my uses.  So, how can I get the latest versions available? Do I
> need to add every release, or can I just add the most latest?
> 
> Also, is the process of adding a GHC release, or any Haskell package any
> different from the typical procedure to add a package? I'd like some
> introductory guidance/resources to learn that.

There should not be a difference with packages for other languages.
As far as I know, however, ghc is annoying to bootstrap, and we need at
least the latest x.y.z version to continue to x.(y+2).

> The same is true for rustc, the latest stable release is not updated. I'd like
> to help with that, if possible.

For rust, there is a special branch rust-team, where the work is coordinated.

Andreas

Re: Haskell & Rust Team on recent stable releases of compilers

[Divya Ranjan]

Hello Andreas!

Andreas Enge <andreas@enge.fr> writes:

>> Regarding copyright assignment, I've already started the paperwork by emailing
>> the form to assign@gnu.org. I did it through Emacs, but I believe I don't need
>> to do it again? Some guidance for that would also be helpful.
>
> No need to assign copyright for work on Guix, we keep the individual
> contributors.

Great! 

> But I may as well comment on the other ones and have myself corrected by more
> knowlegeable people from the corresponding teams.
>
>> I've been using Guix for the last few months. As a Haskell programmer, I
>> realized the latest stable that's available in the guix package repository is
>> 9.2.8 which is _really_ old, considering that the current stable releases are
>> at least older than 9.6.x.
>> 
>> I'd like to contribute to this if I can, since I myself would like to have the
>> latest GHC for my uses.  So, how can I get the latest versions available? Do I
>> need to add every release, or can I just add the most latest?
>> 
>> Also, is the process of adding a GHC release, or any Haskell package any
>> different from the typical procedure to add a package? I'd like some
>> introductory guidance/resources to learn that.
>
> There should not be a difference with packages for other languages.
> As far as I know, however, ghc is annoying to bootstrap, and we need at
> least the latest x.y.z version to continue to x.(y+2).

Understood, will keep in mind.

>> The same is true for rustc, the latest stable release is not updated. I'd like
>> to help with that, if possible.
>
> For rust, there is a special branch rust-team, where the work is coordinated.

Okay, should I contact them separately or do I need to CC someone specific?

Regards,
-- 
Divya Ranjan,
Philosophy, Mathematics, Libre Software.

Re: Haskell & Rust Team on recent stable releases of compilers

[Andreas Enge]

Am Mon, Oct 21, 2024 at 03:28:48PM +0000 schrieb Divya Ranjan:
> Okay, should I contact them separately or do I need to CC someone specific?

From the checkout, you can do this:
   ./etc/teams.scm show rust

...
members:
+ Efraim Flashner <efraim@flashner.co.il>

Well, so a team can be one person ;-)
I think Efraim reads this list, but feel free to cc him.

Andreas

Re: Haskell & Rust Team on recent stable releases of compilers

[Divya Ranjan]

Andreas Enge <andreas@enge.fr> writes:

> Am Mon, Oct 21, 2024 at 03:28:48PM +0000 schrieb Divya Ranjan:
>> Okay, should I contact them separately or do I need to CC someone specific?
>
> From the checkout, you can do this:
>    ./etc/teams.scm show rust
>
> ...
> members:
> + Efraim Flashner <efraim@flashner.co.il>
>
> Well, so a team can be one person ;-)
> I think Efraim reads this list, but feel free to cc him.

Thanks for that tip, Andreas!

Regards,
-- 
Divya Ranjan,
Philosophy, Mathematics, Libre Software.

Re: Haskell & Rust Team on recent stable releases of compilers

[Efraim Flashner]

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On Mon, Oct 21, 2024 at 03:53:48PM +0000, Divya Ranjan wrote:
> Andreas Enge <andreas@enge.fr> writes:
> 
> > Am Mon, Oct 21, 2024 at 03:28:48PM +0000 schrieb Divya Ranjan:
> >> Okay, should I contact them separately or do I need to CC someone specific?
> >
> > From the checkout, you can do this:
> >    ./etc/teams.scm show rust
> >
> > ...
> > members:
> > + Efraim Flashner <efraim@flashner.co.il>
> >
> > Well, so a team can be one person ;-)
> > I think Efraim reads this list, but feel free to cc him.
> 
> Thanks for that tip, Andreas!
> 

I've been on a bit of a hiatus with the holidays but they're almost done
so I hope to be more "productive" soon.

I'm currently testing a small bump to librsvg and then I'm going to add
the rust-team branch to the merge queue, which will upgrade the rust
package to 1.81.


-- 
Efraim Flashner   <efraim@flashner.co.il>   רנשלפ םירפא
GPG key = A28B F40C 3E55 1372 662D  14F7 41AA E7DC CA3D 8351
Confidentiality cannot be guaranteed on emails sent or received unencrypted

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Re: Haskell & Rust Team on recent stable releases of compilers

[Divya]

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On 22 October 2024 08:43:47 GMT, Efraim Flashner <efraim@flashner.co.il> wrote:
>On Mon, Oct 21, 2024 at 03:53:48PM +0000, Divya Ranjan wrote:
>> Andreas Enge <andreas@enge.fr> writes:
>> 
>> > Am Mon, Oct 21, 2024 at 03:28:48PM +0000 schrieb Divya Ranjan:
>> >> Okay, should I contact them separately or do I need to CC someone specific?
>> >
>> > From the checkout, you can do this:
>> >    ./etc/teams.scm show rust
>> >
>> > ...
>> > members:
>> > + Efraim Flashner <efraim@flashner.co.il>
>> >
>> > Well, so a team can be one person ;-)
>> > I think Efraim reads this list, but feel free to cc him.
>> 
>> Thanks for that tip, Andreas!
>> 
>
>I've been on a bit of a hiatus with the holidays but they're almost done
>so I hope to be more "productive" soon.
>
>I'm currently testing a small bump to librsvg and then I'm going to add
>the rust-team branch to the merge queue, which will upgrade the rust
>package to 1.81.
>
>
>-- 
>Efraim Flashner   <efraim@flashner.co.il>   רנשלפ םירפא
>GPG key = A28B F40C 3E55 1372 662D  14F7 41AA E7DC CA3D 8351
>Confidentiality cannot be guaranteed on emails sent or received unencrypted

Great, thanks Efraim!

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Re: Haskell & Rust Team on recent stable releases of compilers

[Saku Laesvuori]

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> Hello Guix Devs,
> 
> I've been using Guix for the last few months. As a Haskell programmer,
> I realized the latest stable that's available in the guix package
> repository is 9.2.8 which is _really_ old, considering that the
> current stable releases are at least older than 9.6.x.
> 
> I'd like to contribute to this if I can, since I myself would like to
> have the latest GHC for my uses.  So, how can I get the latest
> versions available? Do I need to add every release, or can I just add
> the most latest?

I think you need to add every other major release to the chain. We
already have 9.2 and 9.4, so 9.6 should not be a problem in that regard.

> Also, is the process of adding a GHC release, or any Haskell package
> any different from the typical procedure to add a package? I'd like
> some introductory guidance/resources to learn that.

Not really, but this specific update (GHC 9.4 to 9.6) is quite tricky
because GHC changed their build system from a make to Hadrian. Hadrian
written in Haskell and depends on quite many packages, so we need to
build all those with an earlier GHC version to be able to build the
current GHC. See https://issues.guix.gnu.org/67921 for the current
situation with this. I am still quite busy with other things in life, so
feel free to pick those patches up.

The Guix manual[1] and cookbook[2] have generic documentation and examples
for creating Guix packages.

[1]: https://guix.gnu.org/manual/devel/en/guix.html
[2]: https://guix.gnu.org/cookbook/en/guix-cookbook.html

- Saku

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Re: Haskell & Rust Team on recent stable releases of compilers

[Lars-Dominik Braun]

Hi,

> > Also, is the process of adding a GHC release, or any Haskell package
> > any different from the typical procedure to add a package? I'd like
> > some introductory guidance/resources to learn that.
> 
> Not really, but this specific update (GHC 9.4 to 9.6) is quite tricky
> because GHC changed their build system from a make to Hadrian. Hadrian
> written in Haskell and depends on quite many packages, so we need to
> build all those with an earlier GHC version to be able to build the
> current GHC. See https://issues.guix.gnu.org/67921 for the current
> situation with this. I am still quite busy with other things in life, so
> feel free to pick those patches up.

in addition, note that we’re importing packages matching our GHC version
from Stackage where possible and not the latest and greatest from Hackage.

Lars

Re: Haskell & Rust Team on recent stable releases of compilers

[Divya Ranjan]

Hello Lars!

Lars-Dominik Braun <lars@6xq.net> writes:

>> Not really, but this specific update (GHC 9.4 to 9.6) is quite tricky
>> because GHC changed their build system from a make to Hadrian. Hadrian
>> written in Haskell and depends on quite many packages, so we need to
>> build all those with an earlier GHC version to be able to build the
>> current GHC. See https://issues.guix.gnu.org/67921 for the current
>> situation with this. I am still quite busy with other things in life, so
>> feel free to pick those patches up.
>
> in addition, note that we’re importing packages matching our GHC version
> from Stackage where possible and not the latest and greatest from Hackage.

Is there a specific reason why we’re following the Stackage releases? Stackage is one step slower in getting the updates. The current Stackage Nightly is 9.8.2, while Hackage has 9.10.1. Is this due to some stability issues with Hackage?

Regards,
-- 
Divya Ranjan,
Philosophy, Mathematics, Libre Software.

Re: Haskell & Rust Team on recent stable releases of compilers

[Lars-Dominik Braun]

Hi,

> Is there a specific reason why we’re following the Stackage releases? Stackage is one step slower in getting the updates. The current Stackage Nightly is 9.8.2, while Hackage has 9.10.1. Is this due to some stability issues with Hackage?

Stackage’s package collection is coherent and so we don’t have to
manually deal with and resolve dependency conflicts. (Currently the
Hackage/Stackage importer cannot pick the correct package version for
dependencies when importing or updating a package.)

Lars

Re: Haskell & Rust Team on recent stable releases of compilers

[Divya]

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On 22 October 2024 14:32:08 GMT, Lars-Dominik Braun <lars@6xq.net> wrote:
>Hi,
>
>> Is there a specific reason why we’re following the Stackage releases? Stackage is one step slower in getting the updates. The current Stackage Nightly is 9.8.2, while Hackage has 9.10.1. Is this due to some stability issues with Hackage?
>
>Stackage’s package collection is coherent and so we don’t have to
>manually deal with and resolve dependency conflicts. (Currently the
>Hackage/Stackage importer cannot pick the correct package version for
>dependencies when importing or updating a package.)
>
>Lars
>

Understood. Makes sense.

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Re: Haskell & Rust Team on recent stable releases of compilers

[Jordan Moore]

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Another thing to keep in mind is that packaging for development is different than packaging for a distribution. Packaging for a distribution you only want to pull in packages from stackage that are required to build eg. xmonad or shellcheck.

However having robust importing for when those needs / maintenence on those packages arrives, and for using guix to help develop a haskell project would be a good gain. imo focusing attention on the importer(s) and the ability to import from different sources (correctly) would be the problem to tackle.

On Tue, Oct 22, 2024, at 10:50, Divya wrote:
> On 22 October 2024 14:32:08 GMT, Lars-Dominik Braun <lars@6xq.net> wrote:
>> Hi,
>>> Is there a specific reason why we’re following the Stackage releases? Stackage is one step slower in getting the updates. The current Stackage Nightly is 9.8.2, while Hackage has 9.10.1. Is this due to some stability issues with Hackage?
>> 
>> Stackage’s package collection is coherent and so we don’t have to
>> manually deal with and resolve dependency conflicts. (Currently the
>> Hackage/Stackage importer cannot pick the correct package version for
>> dependencies when importing or updating a package.)
>> 
>> Lars
> 
> Understood. Makes sense.

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Re: Haskell & Rust Team on recent stable releases of compilers

[Divya Ranjan]

Hello, Saku!

Saku Laesvuori <saku@laesvuori.fi> writes:

> I think you need to add every other major release to the chain. We
> already have 9.2 and 9.4, so 9.6 should not be a problem in that regard.

Okay, so GHC needs to be incrementally upgraded, understood.

>> Also, is the process of adding a GHC release, or any Haskell package
>> any different from the typical procedure to add a package? I'd like
>> some introductory guidance/resources to learn that.
>
> Not really, but this specific update (GHC 9.4 to 9.6) is quite tricky
> because GHC changed their build system from a make to Hadrian. Hadrian
> written in Haskell and depends on quite many packages, so we need to
> build all those with an earlier GHC version to be able to build the
> current GHC. See https://issues.guix.gnu.org/67921 for the current
> situation with this. I am still quite busy with other things in life, so
> feel free to pick those patches up.

Indeed, since I’ve done a bit of tinkering with GHC’s source, and have tried building with Hadrian, I’ll see what can be done. Thank you for referring me to the issue, I’ll check.

> The Guix manual[1] and cookbook[2] have generic documentation and examples
> for creating Guix packages.
>
> [1]: https://guix.gnu.org/manual/devel/en/guix.html
> [2]: https://guix.gnu.org/cookbook/en/guix-cookbook.html

Thanks!

Regards,
-- 
Divya Ranjan,
Philosophy, Mathematics, Libre Software.