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

[Dominik Schrempf]

Hi,

to add my two cents:

I have never used GHCup, I used the Arch package repository, as well as Haskell
Stack (installed using an Arch package manager) in the past, and I am using Nix
with cabal-install now. I think it is good practice to encourage people to use
the package managers of their respective operating systems. Repositories and
powerful package managers are one of the greatest advantages of Linux based
operating systems, in my opinion.

I also think that Stack should be capitalized.

To install stack… => To install Stack… (or probably: To install Haskell
Stack…).

I would also encourage people to install Stack using their package managers, and
not using some shell script. I know, we trust the Stack maintainers, but
somehow, I trust people developing my operating system even more than that (I
guess, I have to, anyways :-)).

Best,
Dominik


Tom Ellis <tom-lists-haskell-cafe-2017 at jaguarpaw.co.uk> writes:

> The Haskell.org committee is considering removing the “alternative
> installation options” section from the [downloads page of
> haskell.org](<https://www.haskell.org/downloads/>) and we seek the
> opinion of the community. If you would like to share your opinion we
> prefer that you do so [on the haskell.org issue
> tracker](<https://github.com/haskell-infra/www.haskell.org/issues/170>),
> but failing that, in this email thread is fine too.
>
> ### Background
>
> The [downloads page of
> haskell.org](<https://www.haskell.org/downloads/>) suggests using ghcup
> and stack to obtain a toolchain. These two tools are widely used in
> the community, actively maintained and kept up-to-date. The page also
> provides a number of “alternative installation options” (see below, or
> on the page itself, for the list).
>
> The Haskell.org committee does not have the resources to ensure that
> these alternative installation options are kept maintained and
> confirmed working. We don’t even know if anyone uses them. Anyone who
> uses them is likely to be an “advanced user” anyway, since they
> require more expertise to implement. stack and ghcup presumably work
> well on all those platforms, are the most well-maintained installation
> options and most suitable for beginners.
>
> ### Possibilities
>
> We have a couple of options:
>
> 1. Remove all the alternative installation options.
> 2. 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.
>
> ### What we would like from you
>
> * Please share your opinion about removing the alternative
>   installation options, especially if you are a user of one of them!
>   * If you are willing to maintain an alternative installation option,
>   please speak up!
>
>
> ### Current alternative installation options
>
> * Linux Ubuntu (confusing (see
>   <https://github.com/haskell-infra/www.haskell.org/issues/16>) and
>   probably outdated)
>   * Linux Debian (links to <https://downloads.haskell.org/~debian/>
>   which doesn’t support Debian 11 Bullseye)
>   * Linux Fedora
>   * Linux EPEL for RHEL/CentOS/etc
>   * Linux Arch
>   * Linux openSUSE Leap
>   * Linux openSUSE Tumbleweed
>   * Linux Gentoo
>   * Windows Chocolatey
>
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