[Haskell-cafe] Re: install-dirs on Mac OS X

[Heinrich Apfelmus]

Mark Lentczner wrote:
> I have been thinking about the location of installed Haskell package
> files on Mac OS X. The choice of location affects: GHC & other
> Haskell implementations Haskell Platform Cabal & cabal-install 
> Haddock If all those agreed on directory locations and layouts, I
> think the state of Haskell on Mac OS X would be nicer for users. In
> particular, my hope is for users to end up with an automatically
> complete Haddock documentation incorporating everything they install.
> 
>
> 1) Packages the user installs --global
> 
> [...]
> 
> I suggest that the default place for global installs on Mac OS X be: 
> /Library/Haskell/

+1

Likewise,  ~/Library/Haskell  seems to be the best place for user installs.

> 2) Structure of package pieces
> 
> I notice that cabal/cabal-install's default layout of where a
> package's pieces go, and GHC's layout of its base packages don't
> agree. Further, cabal/cabal-install's are not set up so that one can
> easily delete an installed package without hunting down its parts.
> 
> I think it best if everything for a package is in one place - making
> removal very easy

+1

With this scheme, a package could be changed from user to global by
simply drag & drop to the other directory, though that won't work anyway
due to dependencies.


> 3) Symlinks for binaries
> 
> This does suggest that it would be nice for the symlink-bindir
> facility (is that in cabal itself, or added by cabal-install?) to
> have a version for --global installs. Users could then either set
> something like: symlink-global-bindir: /usr/local/bin in
> .cabal/config.
> 
> Or symlink-global-bindir: /Library/Haskell/bin and then put that in
> their PATH

+1 , considering that folks may also want to install their GHC with
MacPorts.



Regards,
Heinrich Apfelmus

--
http://apfelmus.nfshost.com