Dhall-haskell: Include windows precompiled binaries in releases

[jneira]

For the tortured souls who use it :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:
I could compile it in my windows 10 laptop

[Gabriel439]

@jneira: Yeah, feel free to do so. You're a contributor so you have permission to attach binaries that you build to each release if you want.

In the long run what I would really like to do is to have CI build windows binaries using cross-compilation. I'm just waiting for this work to get upstreamed so that we can have Dhall's CI build Windows binaries for every branch and every release:

https://github.com/input-output-hk/nix-hs-hello-windows

[jneira]

@jneira: Yeah, feel free to do so. You're a contributor so you have permission to attach binaries that you build to each release if you want.

Hi, i have no experience making binary distributions or github releases so to confirm the steps:

• create a binary distribution: i guess that i only have to zip the win executable in a file named dhall-1.18.0-x86_64-windows
• attach the new binary to an existing release: it seems i would need a tool to use the github api (like https://github.com/aktau/github-release or https://github.com/tfausak/github-release) and push permission to the repo (but i don't have it although i am a contributor, right?)
  
  
  
  • Or use the github web app: i dont see any "edit" button (and upload files dont work for me in my repos)
  
  

[jneira]

I've uploaded the windows executable to my fork tag: https://github.com/eta-lang/dhall-haskell/releases/tag/1.18.0
When attempting to upload to this repo using github-release i've got a 403.

[basile-henry]

@jneira I don't think you need github-release, since you are a contributor here you should be able to go to https://github.com/dhall-lang/dhall-haskell/releases and click Edit next to dhall-1.18.0, you can then drop your binary to be distributed as part of the release. :smile:

[jneira]

I am afraid i have no edit button in https://github.com/dhall-lang/dhall-haskell/releases (but i have it in my forks or in dhall-json). I think you have to be collaborator and not only contributor.
Moreover, in the repos in which i have push permissions the github web app fails to attach files for me (using last version of chrome) so i had to use github-release anyway. :thinking:

[basile-henry]

@jneira Ah alright, I thought you had the permissions already. I have uploaded the windows binary for you taking it from https://github.com/eta-lang/dhall-haskell/releases/tag/1.18.0

[jneira]

@basile-henry thanks a lot! i think we can close this then (unless we want to track the future CI build with win binaries).

[jneira]

Uploaded binaries for dhall-1.19.1 and friends! dhall-1.19.0 is coming

[Gabriel439]

@jneira: Thank you! 🙂

Just as an update, I'm waiting for this to be upstreamed into Nixpkgs so that we can build Windows binaries automatically in CI using a cross compiler:

https://github.com/input-output-hk/nix-hs-hello-windows

[jneira]

Uploaded windows binaries for dhall-1.20.0 and co!

[f-f]

I was thinking if it would be fine to add Travis or AppVeyor configs to build macOS and Windows binaries while we wait for the cross-compiler?

[Gabriel439]

@f-f: I don't know about AppVeyor, but we tried Travis and the issue we ran into at the time was that the build regularly timed out because Dhall had a large dependency tree and most of the dependencies were not in cache

[f-f]

@Gabriel439 yeah that's a very common issue with Travis when building on Linux. We do build spago on Travis (macOS and Linux), and we depend on Dhall (so we have a larger dependency footprint): the macOS build never had any issue, but the Linux build would time out every time if we didn't use the trick on building on a docker image with precached dependencies - I assume everyone builds on Linux so the shared machines have less capacity.

In our case the Hydra build covers Linux, so Travis should work fine at least for macOS. I don't have much experience with Windows, but I could give it a try on Travis or AppVeyor

[jneira]

It turns out that appveyor + chocolatey is a pretty common choice for windows. For example it is used in cabal: https://github.com/haskell/cabal/blob/master/appveyor.yml
I am gonna try to build my fork with it here: https://github.com/jneira/dhall-haskell/tree/appveyor

[jneira]

Hi, i have a almost finished version of appveyor config: https://github.com/jneira/dhall-haskell/blob/appveyor/appveyor.yml. It builds the project using stack, with the default lts and lts-6 and generates the four artifacts used in releases.
I still have to test the automatic upload of artifacts in tag pushes.

In the meanwhile i've uploaded the zips for 1.20.1 manually.

[Gabriel439]

@jneira: Thanks for doing that! 🙂

[jneira]

i think we can close this cause windows artefacts are uploaded auto from appveyor builds in releases