[Haskell-cafe] Creating binary distributions with Cabal

[Magnus Therning]

On Fri, Aug 20, 2010 at 10:18, Christopher Done
<chrisdone at googlemail.com> wrote:
> Does Cabal have a way to produce binary distributions from a package?
>
> I need to create a binary distribution of my project which does not
> depend on GHC or any development tools. The package should include all
> required data files and configuration files. I've got the latter
> covered with Data-Files and getDataFileName, but not sure about what
> to do regarding configuration files -- read/write to
> $HOME/.myproject/config or $HOME/.myprojectrc, etc., or what?
>
> I'm specifically targeting Redhat because that's the production
> server, but I'm wondering if there is or will be a way to agnostically
> access data files and configuration files without having to think
> about what OS it will be running on, in the same way I can use sockets
> or file access without worrying about the particular OS.
>
> Something like cabal sdist --binary --rpm/deb/arch/win/etc?
>
> How does everyone else package up their Haskell programs for binary
> distribution?

This is what package managers like rpm, dpkg, pacman, etc shines at.  So for
Distribution for Linux that's what I suggest you use.  For Windows you'd
probably have to hook things up to some installer-generator (WiX[1] maybe?).

Other options are autopackage[2] and zeroinstall[3].

/M


[1] http://wix.sourceforge.net/
[2] http://www.autopackage.org/
[3] http://zero-install.sourceforge.net/
-- 
Magnus Therning                        (OpenPGP: 0xAB4DFBA4)
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