[Haskell-cafe] Deploying a Binary Haskell Package

[Duncan Coutts]

On Tue, 2008-11-18 at 10:20 -0500, John Van Enk wrote:
> This question isn't directly related to Haskell, but I figure some one
> might know here.
> 
> I want to deploy an application. I could either:
> 1) Tell people how to download GHC, have them check out the
> repository, have them install all the needed hackage packages, ...
>     or
> 2) Give them a setup.msi/exe
> 
> I'm curious if any one has done this with a Haskell package. It seems
> that it's something that might make sense being integrated into Cabal
> (runhaskell Setup msi).

I think the right approach here is as a separate tool, like we have
tools for generating native packages for rpm, deb and other
distributions.

Of course it only makes sense for applications, not libraries.

> Either way, has some one deployed a Haskell binary as a MSI package?

Not MSI[1] but .exe yes. Here's an example:

http://haskell.org/~duncan/gtk2hs/LSystemSetup.exe

It is an installer (made with the free InnoSetup builder) for a simple
graphical application that uses HOpenGL, Gtk2Hs and therefore Gtk+. It
installs the application .exe the Gtk+ dll files and a data file for the
GUI.

Duncan

[1] On a job many years ago I had to make an MSI installer and now hate
them with a passion :-)