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List: haskell-c2hs
Subject: Re: [C2hs] Looking for a new maintainer
From: Manuel M T Chakravarty <chak () justtesting ! org>
Date: 2016-04-02 4:41:08
Message-ID: E4910963-16A2-4152-A3D1-EEAF486CC30F () justtesting ! org
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Ian,
First of all, thank you very much for the great work that you have done maintaining \
and improving C->Haskell over the years. It is great to see the tool used in so many \
places and that would have been impossible without your hard work!
Secondly, I was wondering whether you have found somebody in the meantime. You \
mentioned that somebody was interested, but the person wasn't sure whether they'd \
want to take it on by themselves.
Cheers,
Manuel
> Ian Ross <ian@skybluetrades.net>:
>
> Hi Benedikt,
>
> Thanks for the response. And I think the response times for language-c issues have \
> been completely fine. I have no complaints there at all!
> It's interesting what you say about the other C parsing libraries. It sounds as \
> though I'd got the wrong impression of them. Perhaps we would be better off trying \
> to persuade any new C2HS maintainer to join in on the maintenance of language-c as \
> well. That would definitely involve a smaller workload than switching C2HS over to \
> a different parsing library. There are a few other reverse dependencies of \
> language-c as well as C2HS (http://packdeps.haskellers.com/reverse/language-c \
> <http://packdeps.haskellers.com/reverse/language-c>), but only about half a dozen \
> of those seem to be active, so coordinating changes to language-c for C2HS that \
> wouldn't break the other dependencies might not be so hard.
> I have some "tentative" interest from someone in taking over C2HS maintenance, but \
> they're wary of being the only maintainer, so I'm trying to persuade someone else \
> as well. If they do agree, then maybe we could get them set up with write access \
> to language-c as well.
> Cheers,
>
> Ian.
>
>
> On 3 March 2016 at 17:13, Benedikt Huber <benedikt.huber@gmail.com \
> <mailto:benedikt.huber@gmail.com>> wrote: Hi Ian,
> I do appreciate your maintainance of c2hs in the past, and also do understand that \
> response times concerning language-c extensions are not exactly short (much better \
> now that I received an email concerning the problem, though).
> However, I strongly disagree that lacking support for new C features (C11 is really \
> not the point, because all issues so far were vendor-specific extensions) will be \
> less of a problem if you switch to one of the other libraries you mentioned. These \
> libraries might be the far better match for c2hs, I do not know, but you shouldn't \
> create the illusion that they support a larger subset of C11 + gcc extensions. \
> According to their pages, Language.C.Quote support C99 (and several interesting \
> extensions concerning CUDA), but as far as I can see not the int128 type, for \
> example. language-c-inline uses language-c-quote. If you could leverage clang that \
> would be another story, but not an easy task either...
> Anyways, if someone wants write access to language-c or is seriously interested in \
> improving and maintaining it, please go ahead! Maybe it would help to move \
> development to github - there is already a mirror anyway \
> (https://github.com/visq/language-c <https://github.com/visq/language-c>).
> Best, Benedikt
>
>
> Ian Ross <ian@skybluetrades.net <mailto:ian@skybluetrades.net>> schrieb am Do., 3. \
> März 2016 um 12:40 Uhr: Dear all,
>
> I've been maintaining C2HS since July 2013, and I'd now like to spend my "Haskell \
> time" on something else. That means that I'm looking for someone to take over C2HS \
> maintenance.
> The project is mature, the code is pretty clean (especially where I've not touched \
> it!) and has relatively infrequent issues arising, but there is one *big* job that \
> needs to be done to make C2HS viable in the long term, and anyone who takes over \
> maintenance needs to know about this.
> Bug reports for C2HS mostly fall into three categories: feature requests, "real" \
> bugs in the logic of C2HS (fixing these varies in difficulty a lot), and finally \
> problems caused by the C compilers and associated header files moving ahead of the \
> language-c library that C2HS uses for parsing C headers. This third class of \
> issues is the problem. We have been making piecemeal fixes to language-c to deal \
> with some of these issues, but language-c was only ever intended as a parser for \
> C99 (plus some GNU extensions), so it's falling over more and more often on C11 \
> features that are cropping up. It's also not actively maintained, although the \
> maintainer (Benedikt Huber) is happy to accept patches.
> The solution to this problem is to move C2HS over to using one of the other C \
> parsing libraries that are actively maintained and that support more recent C \
> dialects -- language-c-quote or language-c-inline, for example. This is the "big \
> job": all the AST types are different between the different parsing libraries, and \
> language-c contains some syntactic and type analysis features used by C2HS that \
> would need to be ported to whatever new parsing library was used. We have some \
> ideas how to do this in a minimally painful way, but it's still going to be a bit \
> of a slog.
> On the positive side, although it's a big job, C2HS has reasonable test \
> infrastructure in place to help -- there's a pretty extensive test suite, and a \
> VM-based regression suite that does test builds of a number of packages that use \
> C2HS (some of these run on Travis too).
> If you're interested in taking over maintenance of C2HS, feel free to drop me a \
> line with any questions.
> Cheers,
>
> Ian.
>
> --
> Ian Ross Tel: +43(0)6804451378 <tel:%2B43%280%296804451378> \
> ian@skybluetrades.net <mailto:ian@skybluetrades.net> www.skybluetrades.net \
> <http://www.skybluetrades.net/>PGP Key: 0x04490CC0/F4D6 027F 2661 745C 83A5 297D \
> FCCC 0AE6 0449 0CC0
> _______________________________________________
> C2hs mailing list
> C2hs@haskell.org <mailto:C2hs@haskell.org>
> http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/c2hs \
> <http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/c2hs>
>
>
> --
> Ian Ross Tel: +43(0)6804451378 ian@skybluetrades.net \
> <mailto:ian@skybluetrades.net> www.skybluetrades.net \
> <http://www.skybluetrades.net/>PGP Key: 0x04490CC0/F4D6 027F 2661 745C 83A5 297D \
> FCCC 0AE6 0449 0CC0
> _______________________________________________
> C2hs mailing list
> C2hs@haskell.org
> http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/c2hs
[Attachment #5 (unknown)]
<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html \
charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; \
-webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class="">Ian,<div class=""><br \
class=""></div><div class="">First of all, thank you very much for the great work \
that you have done maintaining and improving C->Haskell over the years. It is \
great to see the tool used in so many places and that would have been impossible \
without your hard work!</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Secondly, \
I was wondering whether you have found somebody in the meantime. You mentioned that \
somebody was interested, but the person wasn't sure whether they'd want to take it on \
by themselves.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Cheers,</div><div \
class="">Manuel</div><div class=""><br class=""><div><blockquote type="cite" \
class=""><div class="">Ian Ross <<a href="mailto:ian@skybluetrades.net" \
class="">ian@skybluetrades.net</a>>:</div><br \
class="Apple-interchange-newline"><div class=""><div dir="ltr" class="">Hi \
Benedikt,<div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Thanks for the \
response. And I think the response times for language-c issues have been \
completely fine. I have no complaints there at all!</div><div class=""><br \
class=""></div><div class="">It's interesting what you say about the other C parsing \
libraries. It sounds as though I'd got the wrong impression of them. \
Perhaps we would be better off trying to persuade any new C2HS maintainer to join in \
on the maintenance of language-c as well. That would definitely involve a \
smaller workload than switching C2HS over to a different parsing library. There \
are a few other reverse dependencies of language-c as well as C2HS (<a \
href="http://packdeps.haskellers.com/reverse/language-c" \
class="">http://packdeps.haskellers.com/reverse/language-c</a>), but only about half \
a dozen of those seem to be active, so coordinating changes to language-c for C2HS \
that wouldn't break the other dependencies might not be so hard.</div><div \
class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">I have some "tentative" interest from \
someone in taking over C2HS maintenance, but they're wary of being the only \
maintainer, so I'm trying to persuade someone else as well. If they do agree, \
then maybe we could get them set up with write access to language-c as \
well.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Cheers,</div><div \
class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Ian.</div><div class=""><br \
class=""></div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br class=""><div \
class="gmail_quote">On 3 March 2016 at 17:13, Benedikt Huber <span dir="ltr" \
class=""><<a href="mailto:benedikt.huber@gmail.com" target="_blank" \
class="">benedikt.huber@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br class=""><blockquote \
class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc \
solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr" class=""><div class="">Hi Ian,<br \
class=""></div><div class="">I do appreciate your maintainance of c2hs in the past, \
and also do understand that response times concerning language-c extensions are not \
exactly short (much better now that I received an email concerning the problem, \
though).<br class=""><br class="">However, I strongly disagree that lacking support \
for new C features (C11 is really not the point, because all issues so far were \
vendor-specific extensions) will be less of a problem if you switch to one of the \
other libraries you mentioned. These libraries might be the far better match for \
c2hs, I do not know, but you shouldn't create the illusion that they support a larger \
subset of C11 + gcc extensions. According to their pages, Language.C.Quote support \
C99 (and several interesting extensions concerning CUDA), but as far as I can see not \
the int128 type, for example. language-c-inline uses language-c-quote. If you could \
leverage clang that would be another story, but not an easy task either...<br \
class=""></div><div class=""><br class="">Anyways, if someone wants write access to \
language-c or is seriously interested in improving and maintaining it, please go \
ahead! Maybe it would help to move development to github - there is already a mirror \
anyway (<a href="https://github.com/visq/language-c" target="_blank" \
class="">https://github.com/visq/language-c</a>).<br class=""><br class="">Best, \
Benedikt<br class=""></div><br class=""></div><br class=""><div \
class="gmail_quote"><div class=""><div class="h5"><div dir="ltr" class="">Ian Ross \
<<a href="mailto:ian@skybluetrades.net" target="_blank" \
class="">ian@skybluetrades.net</a>> schrieb am Do., 3. März 2016 um \
12:40 Uhr:<br class=""></div></div></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" \
style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div \
class=""><div class="h5"><div dir="ltr" class="">Dear all,<div class=""><br \
class=""></div><div class="">I've been maintaining C2HS since July 2013, and I'd now \
like to spend my "Haskell time" on something else. That means that I'm looking \
for someone to take over C2HS maintenance.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div \
class="">The project is mature, the code is pretty clean (especially where I've not \
touched it!) and has relatively infrequent issues arising, but there is one *big* job \
that needs to be done to make C2HS viable in the long term, and anyone who takes over \
maintenance needs to know about this.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div \
class="">Bug reports for C2HS mostly fall into three categories: feature requests, \
"real" bugs in the logic of C2HS (fixing these varies in difficulty a lot), and \
finally problems caused by the C compilers and associated header files moving ahead \
of the language-c library that C2HS uses for parsing C headers. This third \
class of issues is the problem. We have been making piecemeal fixes to \
language-c to deal with some of these issues, but language-c was only ever intended \
as a parser for C99 (plus some GNU extensions), so it's falling over more and more \
often on C11 features that are cropping up. It's also not actively maintained, \
although the maintainer (Benedikt Huber) is happy to accept patches.</div><div \
class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">The solution to this problem is to move \
C2HS over to using one of the other C parsing libraries that are actively maintained \
and that support more recent C dialects -- language-c-quote or language-c-inline, for \
example. This is the "big job": all the AST types are different between the \
different parsing libraries, and language-c contains some syntactic and type analysis \
features used by C2HS that would need to be ported to whatever new parsing library \
was used. We have some ideas how to do this in a minimally painful way, but \
it's still going to be a bit of a slog.<br clear="all" class=""><div class=""><br \
class=""></div><div class="">On the positive side, although it's a big job, C2HS has \
reasonable test infrastructure in place to help -- there's a pretty extensive test \
suite, and a VM-based regression suite that does test builds of a number of packages \
that use C2HS (some of these run on Travis too).</div><div class=""><br \
class=""></div><div class="">If you're interested in taking over maintenance of C2HS, \
feel free to drop me a line with any questions.</div><div class=""><br \
class=""></div><div class="">Cheers,</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div \
class="">Ian.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div>-- <br class=""><div \
class=""><div dir="ltr" class=""><div class="">Ian Ross Tel: <a \
href="tel:%2B43%280%296804451378" value="+436804451378" target="_blank" \
class="">+43(0)6804451378</a> <a href="mailto:ian@skybluetrades.net" \
target="_blank" class="">ian@skybluetrades.net</a> <a \
href="http://www.skybluetrades.net/" target="_blank" \
class="">www.skybluetrades.net</a></div>PGP Key: 0x04490CC0/F4D6 027F 2661 745C 83A5 \
297D FCCC 0AE6 0449 0CC0<div class=""><br class=""></div></div></div> \
</div></div></div></div> _______________________________________________<br class="">
C2hs mailing list<br class="">
<a href="mailto:C2hs@haskell.org" target="_blank" class="">C2hs@haskell.org</a><br \
class=""> <a href="http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/c2hs" \
rel="noreferrer" target="_blank" \
class="">http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/c2hs</a><br class=""> \
</blockquote></div> </blockquote></div><br class=""><br clear="all" class=""><div \
class=""><br class=""></div>-- <br class=""><div class="gmail_signature"><div \
dir="ltr" class=""><div class="">Ian Ross Tel: +43(0)6804451378 <a \
href="mailto:ian@skybluetrades.net" target="_blank" \
class="">ian@skybluetrades.net</a> <a href="http://www.skybluetrades.net/" \
target="_blank" class="">www.skybluetrades.net</a></div>PGP Key: 0x04490CC0/F4D6 027F \
2661 745C 83A5 297D FCCC 0AE6 0449 0CC0<div class=""><br \
class=""></div></div></div> </div>
_______________________________________________<br class="">C2hs mailing list<br \
class=""><a href="mailto:C2hs@haskell.org" class="">C2hs@haskell.org</a><br \
class="">http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/c2hs<br \
class=""></div></blockquote></div><br class=""></div></body></html>
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