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

[Daniel Fischer]

Am Sonntag 19 April 2009 13:09:17 schrieb Thomas Davie:
> >> 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).
>
> But students will be used to needing to configure this – in every
> other installation system out there they need to tell it to install in
> their user directory.  Personally – I find it more convenient to have
> the "install" program do what it says it does! Install it!

But it does install it, only not where you want it.

Just for the record, I (no student, my own computer, sole user) prefer user-installs and 
cabal's default behaviour. Makes it so much easier to get rid of things I don't want 
anymore without any fear of buggering my system because something depends on it.

>
> This would save confusion about old tools that do things globally, and
> not confuse students, because they're all already used to giving extra
> flags to make install not install things system wide.

Yes, it is bad that the runhaskell Setup interface has a different default. But, as Duncan 
said, too late to change it now.

>
> Bob