Major installation failure and impossible to post to cabal-devel

Tue Jun 15 10:34:22 EDT 2010

On 21/05/2010 03:08, Mats Ahlgren wrote:
> Additionally, a friend was kind enough to point out:
> "(To avoid spam we ask you to login with username guest and password
> haskell' - note the apostrophe on the end.)" -- from
> http://www.haskell.org/cabal/
>
> This is mentioned on an entire-separate-website than Trac itself.

It's on the front page of the Hackage Trac: 
http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/hackage/

Cheers,
	Simon


The
> people who visit the Trac site would have no idea this exists. Even if
> they did visit http://www.haskell.org/cabal/ , if they are skimming
> they will definitely not see it. It seems like you'd want to add that
> message to the http authentication dialog using the .htaccess file (or
> whatever mechanism), with a message saying "The username=guest and
> password=haskell' (note the apostrophe). This is to combat spam."
>
> On Thu, May 20, 2010 at 10:00 PM, Mats Ahlgren<mats.ahlgren at gmail.com>  wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> It took me about 3 hours and 7 attempts to post to this list, or any
>> similar mailing list. It seems after much sleuthing that my
>> registration did not go through (despite clicking on the confirmation
>> button on the confirmation link page), and the error message did not
>> indicate that. I would highly recommend saying instead of "Error: You
>> can't post" to instead say "Error: You don't seem subscribed to this
>> list. Please try re-subscribing and making sure you click the
>> confirmation button in the confirmation link page. If that fails, try
>> again.". I would also recommend having people actually subscribed to
>> cabal-devel-owner.
>>
>> Additionally http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/hackage/register does not
>> really work -- it requires that you provide a username and password
>> *in order to register* with the username and password. If you fill out
>> this form, you will see a basic http auth popup appear, preventing you
>> from registering.
>>
>> This basically means that people cannot contact the cabal-devel
>> community, nor the libraries at haskell.org community -- in any way
>> whatsoever.
>>
>> If there is some sort of emergency-contact IRC channel, it may be a
>> good idea to link to it on Trac and the Cabal webpage.
>>
>> My actual messages are below.
>>
>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>> From:<libraries-owner at haskell.org>
>> Date: Thu, May 20, 2010 at 9:00 PM
>> Subject: Re: cabal installation failure
>> To: mats.ahlgren at gmail.com
>>
>>
>> You are not allowed to post to this mailing list, and your message has
>> been automatically rejected.  If you think that your messages are
>> being rejected in error, contact the mailing list owner at
>> libraries-owner at haskell.org.
>>
>>
>>
>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>> From: Mats Ahlgren<mats.ahlgren at gmail.com>
>> To: libraries at haskell.org
>> Date: Thu, 20 May 2010 21:34:12 -0400
>> Subject: Re: cabal installation failure
>> Hello,
>>
>> I have tried about 5 different ways to subscribe and send mail to the
>> cabal-devel at haskell.org mailing list, but to no avail.
>> Under instructions from http://www.haskell.org/cabal/ I am emailing
>> this list in hopes that it will reach the relevant people.
>>
>> Issue #1 - impossible to contact Cabal devs (can't even post bugs on Trac):
>>> sidenote: It seems no one is listening to
>>> cabal-devel-owner at haskell.org . Moreover, it seems that it is
>>> impossible to subscribe via the mailmain interface, and not even possible
>>> to subscribe via by sending "subscribe" to cabal-devel-request. This
>>> made it nearly impossible to post to this list.
>>
>> Issue #2:
>>>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>>>> From: Mats Ahlgren<mats.ahlgren at gmail.com>
>>>> To: cabal-devel at haskell.org
>>>> Date: Wed, 19 May 2010 01:34:01 -0400
>>>> Subject: cabal installation failure
>>>> Hello,
>>>>
>>>> I've installed Cabal once in the past with no trouble. However I can
>>>> no longer do so.
>>>>
>>>> I tried to install Cabal on a new computer:
>>>> - I visited http://www.haskell.org/cabal/download.html and got the
>>>> latest version
>>>> - I followed the directions in the README file
>>>> - No error messages were thrown, the process was "successful" and I
>>>> now have a ~/.cabal directory --but-- it doesn't seem as if I have a
>>>> 'cabal' command in /usr/bin or /usr/local/bin or even anywhere in the
>>>> ~/.cabal directory.
>>>> - There was no extra information in the README file; no examples of
>>>> how to proceed or sample usage
>>>> - I then followed the directions to view the user docs online. After
>>>> locating them, it seems there are no instructions for end-users, just
>>>> for people who wish to submit packages.
>>>> - I then looked at
>>>> http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/hackage/wiki/CabalInstall and noticed
>>>> there was another way to do this -- with a ./bootstrap.sh -- but this
>>>> file is missing in the latest version.
>>>>
>>>> The end result is that even after 2 hours, I am unable to figure out
>>>> why Cabal is not working. If I was a new user, I wouldn't even know
>>>> what Cabal does.
>>>>
>>>> I attempted to file a bug, but then saw I was unable to because the
>>>> Trac installation is protected with basic http authentication.
>>>>
>>>> I write this out of concern, because these issues with documentation
>>>> (and what may be a critical bug) may make people shy away from Haskell
>>>> as a platform.
>>>> Also if anyone might have insight into how to fix this, it would be
>>>> much appreciated; thank you.
>>>>
>>>> Sincerely,
>>>> Mats
>>>>
>>>> platform:
>>>> Linux, Ubuntu "Karmic", GHC version 6.10.4; further information
>>>> available upon request
>>
>> The dozens of obstacles I failed to overcome to post to the
>> cabal-devel mailing list is quoted below.
>>
>> Sincerely,
>> Mats
>>
>> On Thu, May 20, 2010 at 9:29 PM, Mats Ahlgren<mats.ahlgren at gmail.com>  wrote:
>>> [attempt #4 to send this mail]
>>>
>>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>>> From: Mats Ahlgren<mats.ahlgren at gmail.com>
>>> Date: Thu, May 20, 2010 at 9:25 PM
>>> Subject: Fwd: cabal installation failure
>>> To: cabal-devel at haskell.org
>>>
>>>
>>> Original message forwarded below.
>>>
>>> sidenote: It seems no one is listening to
>>> cabal-devel-owner at haskell.org . Moreover, it seems that it is
>>> impossible to subscribe via the mailmain interface, and not even possible
>>> to subscribe via by sending "subscribe" to cabal-devel-request. This
>>> made it nearly impossible to post to this list.
>>>
>>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>>> From: Mats Ahlgren<mats.ahlgren at gmail.com>
>>> Date: Wed, May 19, 2010 at 1:45 AM
>>> Subject: Re: cabal installation failure
>>> To: cabal-devel-owner at haskell.org
>>>
>>>
>>> I feel this message was rejected in error due to a race-condition
>>> where I sent it too quickly after registering. Please forward to list
>>> or accept, thank you.
>>>
>>> On Wed, May 19, 2010 at 1:00 AM,<cabal-devel-owner at haskell.org>  wrote:
>>>> You are not allowed to post to this mailing list, and your message has
>>>> been automatically rejected.  If you think that your messages are
>>>> being rejected in error, contact the mailing list owner at
>>>> cabal-devel-owner at haskell.org.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>>>> From: Mats Ahlgren<mats.ahlgren at gmail.com>
>>>> To: cabal-devel at haskell.org
>>>> Date: Wed, 19 May 2010 01:34:01 -0400
>>>> Subject: cabal installation failure
>>>> Hello,
>>>>
>>>> I've installed Cabal once in the past with no trouble. However I can
>>>> no longer do so.
>>>>
>>>> I tried to install Cabal on a new computer:
>>>> - I visited http://www.haskell.org/cabal/download.html and got the
>>>> latest version
>>>> - I followed the directions in the README file
>>>> - No error messages were thrown, the process was "successful" and I
>>>> now have a ~/.cabal directory --but-- it doesn't seem as if I have a
>>>> 'cabal' command in /usr/bin or /usr/local/bin or even anywhere in the
>>>> ~/.cabal directory.
>>>> - There was no extra information in the README file; no examples of
>>>> how to proceed or sample usage
>>>> - I then followed the directions to view the user docs online. After
>>>> locating them, it seems there are no instructions for end-users, just
>>>> for people who wish to submit packages.
>>>> - I then looked at
>>>> http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/hackage/wiki/CabalInstall and noticed
>>>> there was another way to do this -- with a ./bootstrap.sh -- but this
>>>> file is missing in the latest version.
>>>>
>>>> The end result is that even after 2 hours, I am unable to figure out
>>>> why Cabal is not working. If I was a new user, I wouldn't even know
>>>> what Cabal does.
>>>>
>>>> I attempted to file a bug, but then saw I was unable to because the
>>>> Trac installation is protected with basic http authentication.
>>>>
>>>> I write this out of concern, because these issues with documentation
>>>> (and what may be a critical bug) may make people shy away from Haskell
>>>> as a platform.
>>>> Also if anyone might have insight into how to fix this, it would be
>>>> much appreciated; thank you.
>>>>
>>>> Sincerely,
>>>> Mats
>>>>
>>>> platform:
>>>> Linux, Ubuntu "Karmic", GHC version 6.10.4; further information
>>>> available upon request
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>
>
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