[Haskell-beginners] Installing packages in Ubuntu

[Tom Tobin]

On Sat, Nov 7, 2009 at 4:50 PM, Magnus Therning <magnus at therning.org> wrote:
> IMNSHO, cabal (the tool) is primarily for systems with broken, or
> non-existing package managers (read Windows).  For other systems,
> including Ubuntu, people should use the native packaging system as far
> as possible, only reverting to cabal when that fails (for whatever
> reason).

I strongly disagree with this sentiment.  OS package managers tend to
lag behind in releases, assuming they have your package at all; this
problem is severely compounded when you're dealing with a lesser-used
language like Haskell.  I always use cabal (which, IMHO, is a much
better tool than similar tools for other languages, e.g., Python's
easy_install), and believe OS package manager use should be
discouraged for Haskell.  (I'll grant that cabal needs an "uninstall"
command, as well as a working "upgrade all".)