[Haskell-cafe] Where to Cabal Install (was: Re: ANNOUNCE: Utrecht Haskell Compiler (UHC) --first release)

[wren ng thornton]

Claus Reinke wrote:
>>> Installing executable(s) in /home/david/.cabal/bin
>>> why the hell would cabal install binaries in a subdirectory of a
>>> hidden directory. Why not /home/david/bin or /home/david/local/bin ?
>>
>> Yes, this is clearly suboptimal but getting agreement on where to put it
>> has not proved easy. There are users that will scream and shout if we
>> install to $HOME/bin by default.
> 
> Having learned from experience that user preferences differ wildly,
> even on similar platforms, not to mention a variety of platforms or,
> even worse, intentionally different forks of the same platform, and that 
> trying to guess what defaults might be sensible, let alone acceptable,
> can be a losing game, I'd like to offer an alternative view:
> 
>    if there is no universally acceptable default, do not use a default

+1.

Given that cabal has a config file already and so users don't have to 
enter everything on the commandline, this seems like a remarkably 
straightforward solution. The only downside seems like a minor startup 
cost (in exchange for the major restart cost from defaults having been bad).

-- 
Live well,
~wren