Looking for documentation and a list of libraries that do not work with Windows

[Jacek Podkanski]

I am planning a project and among other candidates I am considering Haskell. However I have noticed that some libraries like gi-gtk and the like do not work at all with Windows.

Is there a list of things that work on other systems but do not work on Windows? How feasible is Haskell for a commercial project?
I have seem some bug reports where a bug was not fixed for over two years.
People close bugs without going to the bottom of the problem. Is it because the author uses a POSIX system and the Windows user has given up on Haskell?

Widely used languages have recipes where even a new user can follow a series of steps and achieve some impressive results. Rails Guides is a good example.
Does Haskell have something similar? So far I have not seen an example of correct Haskell installation on Windows for use with GUI libraries.

Some people talk about the problems on Windows saying something like "I do not use Windows, but I see no reason why it would not work on Windows".
But there is a big difference between "I see no reason why it wouldn't work" and "I can demonstrate it works and can tell you how to do it".
Can we use a Virtual machine to test Windows compatibility even if we use other systen?

As you can see I am fed up with trying Haskell. So far I did not have any good results. but is there a hope for me?
Is it possible that the answers to my questions are somewhere there on the Internet, but Google is too dumb to find it?

[Neil Mitchell]

Hi Jacek,

I've been using Haskell on Windows for the last 15 odd years,
commercially for about the last decade. It works absolutely fine. For
most libraries, they build on other libraries, and there is no Windows
vs Linux difference. For the lower level libraries like base,
directory, filepath, process etc. they are carefully maintained and
designed to hide the Windows vs Linux differences. Platform
differences are rarely a problem, and where they are, they get sorted
out very quickly - generally "I see no reason it wouldn't work" means
"it works flawlessly".

The one weak spot might well be native platform GUI's, but my
experience is the Haskell ones are a bit weak on all platforms, so I'm
not sure this is purely a Windows thing... I did get frustrated by
gtk2hs a long time ago, but nowadays I use things like reactive-banana
and that works just fine.

Thanks, Neil

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[Jacek Podkanski]

It was a problem with gi-gtk. It appears that I have stumbled over a bug in ghc. https://github.com/haskell-gi/haskell-gi/issues/113