FW: [GHC] #916: windows installer should play nice with otherHaskell tools

[Claus Reinke]

Simon, Sigbjorn,

we have updated the wiki page http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/Installers
and would welcome your feedback. (only cc-ed to ghc-users for now,
as ghc's is the next installer to be expected; once ghc is on board, we
can ask others)

Initially, we were tempted to try and specify some ideal installation
world, but that turned out to be complicated and unlikely to be 
something all Haskellers could agree on. So we chose to tackle 
the issue from the other side instead, trying to pin down the issues 
on which different installers must not get in each other's way.

An oversimplified micro-summary is "hands off, unless the user 
wants it" - installers should agree on a common file type, lest they
disable each other inadvertedly, and they should permit users to
bypass file name extension association, file type action registration
(right-click menu), and setting of the default action (double-click).

That should hopefully enable initial conformance with minimal
changes, as the next release is imminent (though I'm led to believe
that nothing is straightforward about creating Windows installers;-).

Once the various installers no longer get in each other's way,
things can grow from there, later.

Over to you,
Claus and Neil

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Simon Peyton-Jones" <simonpj at microsoft.com>
To: "Claus Reinke" <claus.reinke at talk21.com>; "Neil Mitchell" <ndmitchell at gmail.com>
Cc: "Sigbjorn Finne" <sof at galois.com>
Sent: Friday, September 29, 2006 11:38 AM
Subject: RE: FW: [GHC] #916: windows installer should play nice with otherHaskell tools


Claus, Neil

This is all v helpful.  Can you let Sigbjorn (and me) know when you have
converged to a common mind, so that he can think about how to implement
it?  No point in doing work until there is an agreed spec!

Thanks

Simon