Major installation failure and impossible to post to cabal-devel

[Mats Ahlgren]

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
>>
>>
>>
>