Major installation failure and impossible to post to cabal-devel

[Mats Ahlgren]

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. 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
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>