Where should cabal install to by default?

[Duncan Coutts]

On Sun, 2008-08-03 at 15:44 -0400, Isaac Dupree wrote:
> Duncan Coutts wrote:
> > ...
> > For unix systems, do per-user installs to --prefix=~/.cabal but if ~/bin
> > exists then add symlinks there.
> 
> just a reminder for anyone: if a directory is not already in 
> $PATH then it's annoying to change $PATH; older shell 
> sessions won't be updated automatically with the new $PATH, 
> at least.  Makes it a little harder to give the user advice 
> on what to do, in the cases in which we have to resort to 
> merely giving advice.

And many new users don't know what a path is or how to change one.

I'd like to avoid new users seeing:

$ cabal install xmonad
cabal: this didn't do what you expected, to fix it change the foo
setting in your bar file.

It's not friendly.

Actually at the moment it's worse though:
$ cabal install xmonad
[.. lots of build output .. ]
$ xmonad
bash: xmonad: command not found
# user gives up, assuming cabal is borked

Duncan