[Haskell-cafe] ANNOUNCE: Utrecht Haskell Compiler (UHC) -- first release

[Duncan Coutts]

On Sun, 2009-04-19 at 10:02 +0200, Thomas Davie wrote:

> >> It really rather makes "cabal install" rather odd – because it  
> >> doesn't actually install anything you can use without providing extra  
> >> options!
> >
> > It should work fine, you'll need to give more details.
> 
> This has been the result, at least every time I've installed ghc:
> 
> $ cabal install xyz

So this does a per-user install.

> $ runhaskell Setup.hs configure -- where abc depends on xyz

This does a global install. Global packages cannot depend on user
packages. You have two choices:

$ cabal configure

because the cabal program does --user installs by default
or use

$ runhaskell Setup.hs configure --user

which explicitly does a --user install.

The reason for this confusion is because the original runghc Setup
interface started with global installs and we can't easily change that
default. On the other hand, per-user installs are much more convenient
so that's the sensible default for the 'cabal' command line program.

Personally I just always use the 'cabal' program and never use the
runghc Setup interface. There's almost never any need to use the runghc
Setup interface.

Duncan