[Haskell-cafe] RFC: removing “alternative installation methods” from haskell.org (or finding them owners)

[Bardur Arantsson]

On 03/04/2022 20.10, Tom Ellis wrote:
> On Sun, Apr 03, 2022 at 07:57:47PM +0200, Bardur Arantsson wrote:
>> On 03/04/2022 19.34, Tom Ellis wrote:
>>> Well, good question, but back at you: who are you discouraging from
>>> Haskell by keeping a large number of complex, unmaintained, possibly
>>> completely wrong, installation instruction on the Downloads page?
>>
>> I have no strong feelings either way, but would it perhaps be viable to
>> just leave that "Alternative installation options" as a simple link to a
>> separate page perhaps be sufficent to guide people to use either of the
>> two 'main' options while still leaving the alternatives semi-documented?
>> Has that been considered?
>>
>> (I think just adding a disclaimer that the 'alternative methods' are not
>> supported per se, but perhaps simultaneously encouraging corrections
>> might be a way to lessen the maintenance burden?)
> 
> The problem that I am trying to solve is that no one with maintenance
> responsibility for the haskell.org website knows if those alternative
> installation methods work, are up-to-date, are currently supported by
> the (external) teams that put them together, etc..  It is not doing
> right by the community to publish information that we cannot support
> or verify.
> 
> If someone is willing to be the "owner" of a particular installation
> method, to ensure it is kept up to date and high quality, then we'll
> keep it!  To reiterate what I said in my first email, we can ...
> 
> "Keep (some of) the alternative installation options and find
> community volunteers to maintain them. The volunteers will be
> responsible for ensuring verifying on a regular basis that their
> instructions are still working, submitting timely corrections when
> necessary, and responding promptly on the issue tracker to questions
> about their installation instructions"
> 

I did read the OP. My point was simply that it might be acceptable to
have half-working (or whatever) instructions if they were squirreled
away behind a link + disclaimer. That might be better for people who
(for whatever reason) don't want either of the officially supported methods.

Regards,