[Haskell-cafe] cabal-install 0.6.2 does not bootstrap with ghc-6.10.1 debian distribution

[Duncan Coutts]

On Sun, 2009-03-08 at 15:33 -0700, Ahn, Ki Yung wrote:

> I am using Debian unstable.
> 
> The version of GHC debian package is 6.10.1+dfsg1-13,
> and installed Haskell libraries (debian packages) are:
> 
> kyagrd at kyavaio:~$ ghc-pkg list
> /usr/lib/ghc-6.10.1/./package.conf:

>     packedstring-0.1.0.1, parallel-1.1.0.0, parsec-3.0.0,

> Bootstrap fails like this:
> 
> kyagrd at kyavaio:~/tmp/cabal-install-0.6.2$ sh bootstrap.sh
> Checking installed packages for ghc-6.10.1...
> 
> The Haskell package 'parsec' is required but it is not installed.
> If you are using a ghc package provided by your operating system
> then install the corresponding packages for 'parsec' and 'network'.
> If you built ghc from source with only the core libraries then you
> should install these extra packages. You can get them from hackage.
> 
> Error during cabal-install bootstrap:
> The Haskell package 'parsec' is required but it is not installed.

What it doesn't say is that it's looking for parsec version 2.

> P.S. Note, parsec and network are installed in the system using debian
> distribution packages.

For some reason the debian package maintainers decided to build
everything against parsec 3 rather than parsec 2 which everyone else is
using. Personally I think this was not a wise decision. Indeed it may be
a problem when it comes to supporting the Haskell platform because the
first version will use parsec 2. Any major parsec version transition in
the Haskell platform will be made by a community decision process.

What I've done is dropped the check for parsec in the bootstrap.sh. The
only reason we're looking for parsec is because it's needed by network
which we also need. So it's not strictly necessary that we check for it.

Duncan