RFC: include a cabal-install executable in future GHC releases

[Ganesh Sittampalam]

If you can't find any better options, I can try to run a buildbot on a
laptop that's probably mostly online.


On 21/01/2014 19:32, Johan Tibell wrote:
> We could offer OS X and Linux binaries in addition to the Windows
> binaries already downloaded on the cabal home page
> (http://www.haskell.org/cabal/) if someone could commit to building them.
> 
> Aside: Right now building the Windows binaries is a very ad-hoc process
> (I email Mikhail who has a Windows machine and ask him to build one).
> I'm not very keen to make the process even slower, given that that will
> mean I will make fewer cabal releases. Ideally the binaries could be
> produced on a build bot. The very least we should have the Makefile in
> the cabal repo being able to create the binary in a reproducible manner.
> 
> -- Johan
> 
> 
> 
> On Tue, Jan 21, 2014 at 11:22 AM, Ganesh Sittampalam <ganesh at earth.li
> <mailto:ganesh at earth.li>> wrote:
> 
>     I feel this blurs the roles of GHC and the Platform.
> 
>     Can't the cabal-install that comes with the Platform can be used with a
>     later GHC installation? If that's correct, then the only use case that
>     this proposal covers is someone who wants to use a bleeding edge GHC and
>     no other version on a new machine. A separate binary distribution of
>     cabal-install should be more than adequate for that and it avoids
>     coupling GHC to other things.
> 
>     So a weak -1.
> 
> 
>     On 20/01/2014 00:02, Carter Schonwald wrote:
>     > Hey everyone,
>     >
>     > I'd like to propose that GHC releases 7.8.1 onwards include a
>     > cabal-install (aka cabal) executable, but not include the library deps
>     > of cabal-install that aren't already distributed with ghc.(unless ghc
>     > should have those deps baked in, which theres very very good
>     reasons not
>     > to do.).
>     >
>     > currently if someone wants just a basic haskell install of the
>     freshest
>     > ghc  they have to install a ghc bindist, then do a boostrap build of
>     > cabal-install by hand (if they want to actually get anything done
>     :) ).
>     >
>     > This is not a human friendly situation for folks who are new to
>     haskell
>     > tooling, but want to try out haskell dev on a server style vm or
>     the like!
>     >
>     > point being: It'd be great for haskell usability (and egads amounts of
>     > config time, even by seasoned users) the ghc bindists / installers
>     > included a cabal-install binary
>     >
>     > thoughts?
>     > -Carter
>     >
>     >
>     >
>     >
>     >
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