[Haskell-cafe] high probability of installation problems and quality of the glorious implementation

[Jason Dagit]

On Sun, Apr 5, 2009 at 4:47 PM, Erik de Castro Lopo
<mle+hs at mega-nerd.com> wrote:
> Jason Dagit wrote:
>
>> In particular, I advise my friends not to install GHC from apt on
>> Debian/Ubuntu because of the way the packages are fractured on those
>> distros.
>
> Fractured?

In the sense that they split up the things GHC builds.  Specifically,
you need to install quite a few packages to get everything that GHC
would come with.

>>  Nothing but problems for casual Haskell hackers.  If you
>> know your distro and Haskell well, then sure it's easy to install all
>> the packages that constitute a normal ghc install.
>
> Well I admit that having done a lot of debian packaging in my day job
> I know the debian packaging system pretty well.

Nice!  Debian is my favorite distro by leaps and bounds.

> I chose to stick to the debian packages because I found cabal to be a
> pain in the neck in comparison :-).

Interesting.  I'm glad that Open Source provides enough diversity that
people can use the tools they enjoy working with.  I like cabal just
fine but I'm glad we can both choose different paths to meet a common
goal.

>> I wonder when we'll get a good haskell virtual package on Debian?
>
> What would this package do?

At a minimum it will give you everything that the GHC HQ installer
gives you.  For the casual haskell hacker, it ideally also gives you
the profiled versions of everything thath GHC HQ installer gives you.
Perhaps this is the Debian equivalent of the 'batteries included'
haskell platform.

Thanks,
Jason