in reply to Re^9: Why Perl 6 is taking so !@#$ long
in thread Why Perl 6 is taking so !@#$ long

I can get perl5 for my NetBSD Sparc but can't get GHC. I suppose that means I can't get Pugs for it either.

⠤⠤ ⠙⠊⠕⠞⠁⠇⠑⠧⠊

  • Comment on Re^10: Why Perl 6 is taking so !@#$ long

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re^11: Why Perl 6 is taking so !@#$ long
by Anonymous Monk on Feb 28, 2006 at 20:08 UTC
    If the choice is between...
    1. A Haskell based Perl6 that runs on 90% of hardware but is available now and...
    2. A Parrot based Perl6 which runs of 99% of hardware, but is 5 years out
    ...I'd choose the Haskell/Perl6 solution and leave the worry over the other 9% of hardware to the future. (And I'd venture a guess that it'd be about 1000 times easier to get GHC working on NetBSD/SPARC then to get parrot in usable shape.)
[reply]

      Agreed. It'd be nice if you weren't anonymous so I could have just sent this to you directly.

      ⠤⠤ ⠙⠊⠕⠞⠁⠇⠑⠧⠊

[reply]
Re^11: Why Perl 6 is taking so !@#$ long
by BrowserUk (Patriarch) on Feb 28, 2006 at 19:34 UTC

    Hmm. According to the GHC supported platforms list:

    sparc-unknown-openbsd

    Supported, including native-code generator. The same should also be true of NetBSD

    Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.
    Lingua non convalesco, consenesco et abolesco. -- Rule 1 has a caveat! -- Who broke the cabal?
    "Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority".
    In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice.
[reply]

      Yeah, it's a nice theory. Four days into attempting to get a port of GHC to run on my machine, I gave up. I just keep the Sparc because it's the only SMP machine I have and I think it's sometimes important to test things on a real SMP box.

      ⠤⠤ ⠙⠊⠕⠞⠁⠇⠑⠧⠊

[reply]

        Did you contact the GHC team for help? They seem to be very supportive.

        Did you try starting with this?

        I gave up. I just keep the Sparc because...

        I take it from that statement that this is somewhat obsolete hardware?

        If you gave up and noone else cares enough to do it, is that good reason to condemn GHC?

        With respect, your failure to build a compiler on a piece of obsolete hardware, no matter how convenient it may be to you, seems hardly a good reason to condemn the Perl6 VM effort to sticking with C.

        Note. I'm not championing GHC--Haskell leaves me cold. I'm simply suggesting that for a new language that has no legacy code to support and therefore has no real need to support legacy platforms, clinging doggedly to C and gcc simply because it is known to be buildable on a 2.4 kHz, steam powered Eniac lookalike doesn't seem sensible.

        Unless you want Perl6 and it's VM to paint themselves into a support corner as the Perl 5 sources have done.

        Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.
        Lingua non convalesco, consenesco et abolesco. -- Rule 1 has a caveat! -- Who broke the cabal?
        "Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority".
        In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice.
[reply]

In Section Meditations