[Haskell-cafe] Re: Hackage on Linux

[Richard O'Keefe]

On Aug 27, 2010, at 9:13 PM, Andrew Coppin wrote:
> 
> Why would you ever want to install a package per-user? I mean, if you don't have permission to do a global install, then you also don't have permission to install GHC in the first place so...? Indeed, the *only* plausible reason I can think of is if you're trying to build something that has unusual package version constraints, and you want to build it without upsetting the entire system.

Scenario:

	A University Computer Science Department.
	One or more laboratories bung full of machines.
	A shared file server with rack upon rack of discs
	holding all the student-accessible files, in another room.
	Administrators install required software before each semester.
	If you are lucky, this includes Haskell.
	A student needs a package.
	The student *CAN'T* do a global install.
	The administrators are busy.
	The student CAN do a per-user install.  The day is saved!
	Much cheering.

So the answer to the question is obvious: you want to install a package per-user if you
are NOT THE SAME PERSON as the one who originally installed GHC.

> It's slightly disturbing how the proposal meantions "make" every three sentences. You realise that make only exists under Unix, right? There _are_ other operating systems out there...

Like OpenVMS, which has MMS (Dec's clone of Make), MMK (a clone of MMS), GNU Make, and
by now several other ports of make.
Like Windows, which has had NMake for yonks, plus ports of other makes,
e.g., GNU Make at http://unxutils.sourceforge.net/  (not Cygwin, native Win32).