[Haskell-cafe] Cabal install on Windows 7

[Peter Verswyvelen]

Yes, it's true that most people tended to be administrators on their
own Windows desktops, but since Vista, this has changed.

Now in Vista, some people still forced admin rights, to get rid of the
many annoying dialog boxes that popped up for every tiny task that
might be a security breach.

But it seems that under Windows 7 this is less intrusive, so we might
consider having the Haskell Platform work well by default without
assuming admin rights? Or at least the installer should clearly tell
you about it, or provide an option.

On Wed, Sep 9, 2009 at 2:28 PM, Duncan
Coutts<duncan.coutts at worc.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
> On Tue, 2009-09-08 at 09:58 -0500, Jeff Wheeler wrote:
>> On Tue, Sep 8, 2009 at 9:17 AM, Peter Verswyvelen<bugfact at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> > Ouch, right, I forgot the default is global. It works fine with cabal
>> > install --user. And of course I could have edited the default config
>> > file, setting user-install: True
>> >
>> > Well, maybe for newbies this might be a bit confusing.
>>
>> Yep, I agree. I'm not sure why Cabal defaults to --global on Windows,
>> but I found it quite counter-intuitive having come from a Linux
>> environment. I forgot about the different default for some time.
>
> It was because last time we discussed this, the Windows users seemed to
> be of the opinion that things were simpler with global installs since
> the %PATH% would be right by default and "everyone runs as Administrator
> anyway". That may well be different now.
>
> If the Windows users can come to a consensus on whether the default
> should be global or user, then we can easily switch it. The same applies
> for the default global or user installation paths.
>
> If there are any Windows users who understand the Windows permissions
> system then the Cabal hackers would appreciate some help. As it is the
> Cabal hackers have no access to Vista or Win7 and cannot test what is
> actually going on with Windows permissions or pop-up windows prompting
> whether it's ok to do this or that.
>
> Duncan
>
>