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

[Don Stewart]

tom.davie:
>
> On 19 Apr 2009, at 11:10, Duncan Coutts wrote:
>
>> 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.
>
> I don't understand what makes user installs more convenient.  Certainly, 
> my preference would be for global all the time – I expect something that 
> says it's going to "install" something to install it onto my computer, 
> like any other installation program does.  What is it that makes user 
> installs more convenient in this situation?

You don't need 'sudo' access for user installs. This means that 'cabal
install' works out of the box on every system, without needing
admin/root privs (esp. important for students).

-- Don