[Haskell] Re: ANNOUNCE: GHC version 6.10.3

[Simon Marlow]

On 15/05/2009 12:19, Benjamin L.Russell wrote:
> On Fri, 15 May 2009 09:16:13 +0100, Simon Marlow<marlowsd at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> On 15/05/2009 05:52, Benjamin L.Russell wrote:
>>> What happened to the Windows installation section in the corresponding
>>> User's Guide?  The User's Guide for GHC version 6.10.2 (see
>>> http://www.haskell.org/ghc/docs/6.10.2/html/users_guide/index.html)
>>> had section 2.2: Installing on Windows (see
>>> http://www.haskell.org/ghc/docs/6.10.2/html/users_guide/install-windows.html#winfaq),
>>> but this section seems to be missing in the corresponding document for
>>> version 6.10.3 (see
>>> http://www.haskell.org/ghc/docs/latest/html/users_guide/index.html).
>>> Not only that, but the entire chapter "2: Installing GHC" seems to be
>>> missing.
>> The "Installing GHC" section was mostly out-of-date and wrong, so I
>> removed it.  Some of the material, such as the section on the layout of
>> the tree, has been updated and moved to the GHC Building Guide, here
>>
>> http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/Building
>>
>> We also have lots of information on the GHC web site about obtaining and
>> installing GHC, so if we need anything else I think that would be the
>> best place to put it.
>
> Ah, I see.
>
> I just checked out that section, but although it includes information
> about building GHC, it doesn't seem to include information about
> simply installing GHC using a binary.  This could become an issue if a
> new user unfamiliar with the installation suddenly decides to upgrade;
> it is unclear without that documentation whether it is necessary to
> uninstall the previous version first.
>
> More specifically, section "2.2.2 Moving GHC Around" indicates that
> the entire GHC tree can be freely moved around "just by copying the
> c:/ghc/ghc-version directory" (although it is necessary "to fix up the
> links in 'Start/All Programs/GHC/ghc-version'" if this is done);
> however, this information is not evident from the information provided
> by the Windows installer.  This information initially led me to
> conclude that uninstalling the previous version wasn't necessary to
> upgrade; without this information, a new user may not be able to
> determine whether uninstalling a previous version is necessary to
> upgrade, and could make upgrading more confusing.

I've added a section "Relocating a GHC installation" to the wiki:

http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/Building/Installing#RelocatingaGHCinstallation

I think the rest could be solved by adding a note on the Windows section 
of the download page to the effect that "This installer will not 
overwrite previous installed versions of GHC, with the exception that 
the default handler for .lhs and .hs files will point to the latest 
installed version".  Ian, would you like to add this to the download page?

Cheers,
	Simon