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

[Edward Middleton]

Achim Schneider wrote:
> Edward Middleton <emiddleton at bebear.net> wrote:
>
>   
>>> ghc 6.8.3 is /usr/bin/ghc on my office Mac, but nothing in the world
>>> prevents there being some other program called ghc that would also
>>> like to be there.  Only by painstaking verification of a whole
>>> bunch of applications together can one be confident of "safety".  
>>>       
>> Well then I guess we agree,  so the question becomes who should do the
>> painstaking verification.  I think distribution maintainers should do
>> this, you think end users who can't compile source packages should do
>> this.
>>     

> Not the maintainers, but the tool. Portage doesn't install stuff if it
> would overwrite other things, records changes to files in e.g. /etc to
> be merged later (interactively, with diffs), and records every file it
> ever installed by having the package install itself in
> /var/portage/<package>/<version>. You are _completely_busted_ if your
> install script doesn't support that: The script runs sandboxed.
>
> Portage even registers every installed package into an empty ghc
> package database, and merges them later. It knows what it does.
>
> I can switch between different versions of packages, or different
> implementations of the same functionality (say, java-sun vs.
> java-blackdown) with eselect.
>
> In short: Don't write your own install scripts, you're bound to get it
> wrong, and/or be vastly inferior, compared to portage.
>   

But who writes the ebuild[1] ?  That said, on the various system I run I
have over 100 custom ebuilds that I maintain.  I can do this because
most applications have standard sane build systems that install things
in the regular places.

Edward
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebuild