target audience for the binary distribution

[Albert Y. C. Lai]

On 14-02-08 01:33 PM, harry wrote:
> Who actually are "most users" for the bindist? Debian & derivatives have the
> latest GHC in the package repository

No. The other pasture is not greener. The distro you don't use is not 
more up to date. Chinese proverb: all crows in the whole world are 
equally black.

Debian and derivatives almost always have the wrong version. Wrong 
version means:

* Lagging behind Haskell Platform. And Haskell Platform is already very 
conservative and has its own wait-and-see period.

* If one version has a serious bug, then long after the bugfix version 
is released, Debian and derivatives still cling on to the bug. Here is a 
historical example: 6.12.1 had a serious bug, fixed in 6 months. Ubuntu 
10.04 and 10.10 both provided 6.12.1, this means 12 months of living 
with the bug for you. (10.04's case was justifiable, 10.10's was 
inexcusable.)
http://www.vex.net/~trebla/haskell/sicp.xhtml#ghc6121

I use the bindist.