[Haskell-cafe] Re: ANNOUNCE: Utrecht Haskell Compiler (UHC) -- first release

[Achim Schneider]

"Richard O'Keefe" <ok at cs.otago.ac.nz> wrote:

> Some of the right questions are
>   - how many potential <whatever> users would need to have
>     <whatever> installed on _some_ machine they do NOT have
>     administrator access to?
>
Irrelevant.

>   - if people find Mac and Windows installers that show you where
>     something is going to be put and offer you the chance to change
>     it acceptable, why exactly would that be unacceptable under
>     Linux or Solaris?
>
It's perfectly acceptable, even required, but, for the love of UNIX,
take that path as a parameter, don't do a GUI. If you want a GUI, write
it in terms of that script.

>   - since we know install-anywhere binary releases are possible,
>     and since we know that an installer _can_ probe to see whether
>     installation in /usr/local (or any other "standard" place) is
>     possible, why not do it?
>
I really, really don't like the idea of a program behaving differently
based on the permissions it has, short of failing to do what I told it
to do.

OTOH, quickly checking whether the user has write permissions to / and
failing with "you need root right to do that, did you mean to call this
script with --user?" instead of failing with access denied errors is a
Good Thing.[1]

Echoing "binaries were installed in $HOME/.cabal/bin", and checking the
user's $PATH and displaying a warning if that directory isn't in it is
a Good Thing, too. I guess it's also the main problem those not
literate in UNIX have with cabal.


[1] Does install --user check whether configure was called with --user,
    too? I hope so...

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