[Haskell-cafe] pkgenv - disposable, isolated pkg environments

[Paolo Losi]

Hi all,

I've been recently toying with a small tool inspired by
the Python tool virtualenv [1].

What it basically allows to do is to setup isolated,
disposable package environments.

You can find a small session example in:
http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/PkgEnv

The main benefits should be:

1. allowing experimenting with package installations
    without "polluting" or breaking the default user
    package DB. When you're done you can simply remove
    the pkgenv directory => disposable

2. starting from a clean, fresh pkg "configuration"
    containing only system packages.
    This make cabal-install dependency analysis job
    much easier and predictable => isolated

pkgenv now only runs on unix, even if it could be
possible to port it to windows...

To test it, download it from

http://bitbucket.org/pao/pkgenv/raw/488bfe8e58dd/pkgenv

chmod a+x and drop to an executable directory.

Any feedback would be really appreciated.
Is this useful at all?
Are there better ways to reach the same goals?

Pao

1. http://pypi.python.org/pypi/virtualenv