[Haskell-beginners] cabal install errors

[Benjamin Edwards]

Ironically enough, cabal is an acronym: Common Architecture for Building
Applications and Libraries. Look ma, no packages! It is shame that almost
every new-comer gets burnt by this in one way or another. I might have a
crack at suggesting some re-writes, or extra caveats to the cabal docs.
On Aug 15, 2012 5:39 AM, "damodar kulkarni" <kdamodar2000 at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> Please see this:
>> http://ivanmiljenovic.wordpress.com/2010/03/15/repeat-after-me-cabal-is-not-a-package-manager/
>>
>
> it is unfortunately true that cabal documentation is very misleading to
> many, especially the beginners ...
> that's why so many of us need to repeat after-an-expert that
> cabal-is-not-a-package-manager ...
>
> But now take a look at how many times the cabal user guide mentions the
> term "package" in its documentation, it is very easy to get misled...
>
> Cabal specifies a standard way in which Haskell libraries and applications
>> can be *packaged* so that it is easy for consumers to use them, or *
>> re-package* them, regardless of the Haskell implementation or
>> installation platform.
>>
>> Cabal defines a common interface — the *Cabal package* — between *package
>> authors, builders and users*. There is a library to help package authors
>> implement this interface, and a tool to enable developers, builders and
>> users *to work with Cabal packages*.
>>
>        taken from http://www.haskell.org/cabal/users-guide/
>
> cabal should have been called haskell-make or hmake or something alike...
>
> thanks Benjamin, for the cabal-dev, hsenv tip though.
>
> -Damodar
>
>
> On Tue, Aug 14, 2012 at 5:38 PM, Benjamin Edwards <edwards.benj at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> I think one point bears repeating: cabal is a build system, really. It
>> does a good enough job of that. It is a *terrible* package manager and
>> using it as one I think is a classic mistake that the community needs to
>> address.
>>
>> My two-penneth worth is this:
>>
>> Use cabal-dev, or hsenv, for *everything* and 99% of your woes will go
>> away. The the only thing I do when getting haskell up and running is to get
>> cabal-dev installed and it's dependencies in the cabal per user pkg store
>> and then cabal-dev sandboxes for everything from then on.
>> On Aug 14, 2012 11:57 AM, "Carlos J. G. Duarte" <
>> carlos.j.g.duarte at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>  On 08/13/12 22:19, Gregory Guthrie wrote:
>>>
>>> Thanks, I'll try that, but it looks like it could be a lot of maintenance and manual cleanup!
>>>
>>> I haven't knowingly done any manual upgrades of core packages, but I have done "update"s as asked by cabal when it thinks the database is getting old. I have had such pedestrian usage that I would not have expected to have goofed up the database!  :-)
>>>
>>> Cabal seems to be more troublesome that other various *package managers* like apt, etc...
>>>
>>>
>>> Please see this:
>>> http://ivanmiljenovic.wordpress.com/2010/03/15/repeat-after-me-cabal-is-not-a-package-manager/
>>>
>>> But yes, cabal or not, I agree that there should be a better system for
>>> managing haskell packages, like pip, gem or cpan... but that boils down to
>>> the problem that some has to do it, and people who are able to do it** are
>>> often too busy for that.
>>>
>>> ** and that doesn't include me, as I'm just starting to explore Haskell
>>> on my spare time.
>>>
>>> All in all, cabal suits me even with its idiosyncrasies.
>>>
>>>
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>>>
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>
>
>
>
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