[Haskell-cafe] Distributing Linux binaries

[Duncan Coutts]

On Mon, 2009-03-09 at 13:26 -0700, Don Stewart wrote:
> lists:
> > Hi folks,
> > 
> > I've got an application to release. I'm releasing the source, but I also wanted
> > to release binary versions for people that don't have GHC. I developed on
> > Windows, so making a Windows executable was simple. I also have access to an
> > Ubuntu Linux box, on which I can easily build and test my app.
> > 
> > But, I'm a bit confused about how to release binaries for Linux. It's not so
> > simple as on Windows. Or, maybe it is but I don't know it. What do people
> > recommend as a way of distributing Linux binaries? I tried to make a Debian
> > package and couldn't figure it out, but maybe that's overkill. GHC itself has
> > some kind of tarball for the binary distributions, one for Debian and one for
> > Red Hat. How would I make such a package and what would go into it? There's
> > only one executable, so it shouldn't be too complicated.
> 
> You could make a .cabal package for it, and use that to construct a
> binary tar.gz bundle that's installable.
> 
> Duncan, is there a cabal binary-dist?

No. If we want it then someone needs to look at this ticket:

http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/hackage/ticket/47

What you can do however is use cabal to make an install image (cabal
copy --destdir=) and then write your own install script or make a deb or
rpm or whatever.

Duncan