[Haskell-cafe] platform/cabal problems

[Johannes Waldmann]

Hi all.

I've written some Haskell program,
and I wanted to give it to a friend, in source form,
so he can run and modify it, and learn some Haskell
while doing so. I was using some cabalized extra packages
but hey, this looks like the typical use case for the haskell-platform.
So: I told him to install the newest stable ghc
and the current platform release and this happens:

la:/home/b/appl.linux/haskell-platform-2009.2.0# ./configure
...
checking for hsc2hs... /usr/local/bin/hsc2hs
checking version of ghc... 6.10.3
checking version of ghc-pkg matches... yes
checking ghc actually works... yes
checking the ghc core packages are all installed... no
configure: error: The core package editline-0.2.1.0 is missing.
  It should have been distributed with 6.10.2
                      ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Well, editline is available from hackage,
but to access it, one needs cabal,
which is included in the platform,
which cannot be built, because, see above.

Yes, I know a handfull of workarounds - but they all
require some previous knowledge, experience, and/or extra time.
Really, if the platform fails in this very simple setting
(a fresh install with current stable releases)
then it is not much help in advertising Haskell.

What's the particular reason for the failure?
editline was distributed with ghc-6.10.2, but not with 6.10.3?
I wouldn't expect an incompatible change
when (only) the patchlevel is bumped.

The platform web site should probably replace
"works with ghc-6.10.x" by "works with ghc-6.10.2 only".

Best regards, Johannes.


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