[Haskell-cafe] Hackage on Linux

[Ivan Lazar Miljenovic]

Andrew Coppin <andrewcoppin at btinternet.com> writes:

> Browsing around Hackage, I notice that a seemingly random subset of
> packages are available for something called "arch linux". Presumably
> some sort of automatic conversion system is involved, but does anyone
> know why only certain packages appear?
>
> I've noticed that both Debian and OpenSUSE have a very tiny selection
> of binary Haskell packages too. I'm guessing that these packages are
> also auto-generated, but presumably selected by hand. (I also don't
> recall seeing them listed on Hackage.) Anybody know about that?
>
> In general, is there an advantage to having native packages for
> Haskell things? I guess it means you can have binary packages, so you
> don't need to build from source. And for executables, it means the
> native package manager can track all the dependencies and install them
> all for you, potentially without needing a Haskell build environment
> at all. Is that it, or have I missed something?

Hackage has limited support for distro maintainers to state which
packages are available on the distribution.  Last I checked, it required
distro maintainers to keep a text file somewhere up to date.

Note that not all distributions bother (in particular none of us
involved with packaging Haskell packages for Gentoo can be bothered;
we're slowly cutting back into only keeping packages that will actually
be used rather than all and sundry), and even those that do might just
list what's in the official repository (I think arch does this).  Even
then, Don Steward has a policy of packaging all and sundry for Arch (at
least in the unofficial repository; this includes packages such as
haskell-updater that are written for Gentoo).

As for why using your distro package manager for Haskell packages is
preferable:
http://ivanmiljenovic.wordpress.com/2010/03/15/repeat-after-me-cabal-is-not-a-package-manager/

-- 
Ivan Lazar Miljenovic
Ivan.Miljenovic at gmail.com
IvanMiljenovic.wordpress.com