[Haskell-cafe] Re: Ubuntu and ghc

[Simon Marlow]

Achim Schneider wrote:
> Simon Marlow <marlowsd at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> Claus Reinke wrote:
>>
>>> - i don't want to have to remove anything explicitly, because
>>> that would mean bypassing the haskell installation managers
>>> - i would want to see a single haskell installation manager
>>>    for each system,
>> I think that's fundamentally the wrong approach.  We shouldn't have
>> to build a "Haskell installation manager".  Would you also want
>> installation managers for Perl, Python, Ruby, C, C++, etc. each with
>> their own different user interfaces and feature sets?  I think not -
>> you want a single package manager for the whole system from which you
>> can install/uninstall libraries for any language.
>>
>> This is something that Windows gets completely wrong.  Why do I have
>> twelve icons in my status bar all representing little programs that
>> are running in the background checking for updates to their own bits
>> of software?  Why on earth do I have a Printer Driver Update
>> Manager?  And I'd be wondering the same thing about a "Haskell
>> installation manager": installation and dependencies are not
>> something specific to Haskell.
>>
> Well, then there are developers who don't want to do .ebuilds, .rpms
> for 20 distributions, .debs for 20 distributions, .cabs... Meaning that
> if you have a project with 5 developers using 3 1/2 distributions, you
> will have a hard time installing.

But the whole point is that the Haskell library developer doesn't have to 
make all these packages: they just make a Cabal package, and the distro 
maintainers have tools that turn a Cabal package into a .ebuild, .deb, .rpm 
etc.  There was also a tool to make Windows installers from Cabal packages 
in the works, but I haven't heard anything on that front for a while.

Cheers,
	Simon