[GHC] #5994: Consider adding a flag to ghc's configure to automatically bootstrap and install cabal-install along with ghc

[GHC]

#5994: Consider adding a flag to ghc's configure to automatically bootstrap and
install cabal-install along with ghc
------------------------------+---------------------------------------------
 Reporter:  td123             |          Owner:                  
     Type:  feature request   |         Status:  new             
 Priority:  normal            |      Component:  Build System    
  Version:  7.4.1             |       Keywords:                  
       Os:  Unknown/Multiple  |   Architecture:  Unknown/Multiple
  Failure:  None/Unknown      |       Testcase:                  
Blockedby:                    |       Blocking:                  
  Related:                    |  
------------------------------+---------------------------------------------
 The current situation is this:
 ghc 7.4.1 includes cabal-install with its source archive.
 Installing the cabal-install from the ghc 7.4.1 source archive does not
 work with ghc 7.4.1 because of incompatible dependencies.
 This is most likely the same issue as described in [0].
 There are also 2 custom cabal-installs in hackage cabal-install-ghc72 and
 cabal-install-ghc74 to workaround incompatibilities with new ghc versions
 and cabal-install.

 There has been a proposal[1] to include cabal-install in ghc before, but
 it was closed for 6.10.1 as wont fix. 6.10.1 also didn't include cabal-
 install. For some reason cabal-install is now in the latest stable ghc
 7.4.1 sources.

 Given that cabal-install is included with the ghc source, I would like to
 propose for there to be an option to get cabal-install installed alongside
 ghc automatically. This would lower the barrier to install the haskell
 package installer, and this would ensure that things like the current
 situation would get more attention before there is a new stable release of
 ghc and it would hopefully never happen again.

 The change could possibly be in the form of a configure flag for ghc (e.g.
 --enable-cabal-install).

 I know this is a controversial proposal so hopefully there could be a
 discussion about the feasibility and benefits of this request.

 [0] - http://haskell.1045720.n5.nabble.com/ANNOUNCE-GHC-7-4-1-Release-
 Candidate-2-td5437004i20.html

 [1] - http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/2385

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Ticket URL: <http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/5994>
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