[Haskell-beginners] apt cabal hackage

[Joey Hess]

Anuradha L wrote:
> Can anyone point me to a tutorial or howto on haskell package management under
> debian/ubuntu?

Don't know if there is one.

> Some of the things that are making my head spin...
> 
> How when to use hackage/cabal? And when apt?

Opinions will vary, but my advice is to use your distribution's package
manager where possible, and where not possible, file bug reports to
get packages added. I filed a bug report requesting weighted-regexp,
and a package was uploaded to Debian unstable less than 24 hours later.
Debian has a very responsive haskell maintainence team whose main issue
is identifying remaining good packages in hackage that have not gotten
packaged yet.

I use cabal if I'm not on a development machine (so Debian stable rather 
than unstable), and need a newer version of something.

The way Debian packages haskell packages lets cabal know about them, 
so it interoperates nicely.

> How to translate haskell internal names (ie names given to import) to package
> names ie either cabal or apt names?

To find what package contains a module I typically use Hayoo.
http://holumbus.fh-wedel.de/hayoo/hayoo.html#0:Data.Text

From hackage to debian package name there is a simple transformation
before ghc7, use    libghc6-<hackagename>-dev
ghc7 and above, use libghc-<hackagename>-dev

> Global (/usr) vs local (under $HOME) packages and figuring out paths

Opinions will probably vary, I don't like installing system wide
software outside the control of my distribution's package manager and
so have only used cabal inside HOME.

-- 
see shy jo
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 828 bytes
Desc: Digital signature
URL: <http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/beginners/attachments/20110921/36bb010a/attachment.pgp>