[Haskell-cafe] How to install GhC on a Mac without registering?

[Donn Cave]

Quoth Chris Smith <cdsmith at gmail.com>,

> That's interesting... whatever the reason, though, I concur that using
> Haskell seems much easier on Linux and Windows.  I had to abandon a plan
> to introduce Haskell in a class I taught this past semester because of
> issues with getting it installed on the Macintosh laptops that some of
> the students had.  It's very unfortunate that Haskell on Mac requires
> software which can neither be bundled in the install kit nor downloaded
> freely from elsewhere.
>
> The part of this that is actually needed is the GCC build system, right?
> Can't that be bundled on its own in a freely downloadable location?
>
> Spoken as a non Mac user...

Exactly.  If you don't use MacOS, let alone develop on it, I guess
it's possible that this looks like an formidable obstacle, but then
wouldn't that pose some limits to how much you're going to be able
to enjoy GHC anyway?

I might be missing something here, since I have never really gotten
into the Darwin ports thing, but it seems to me like the "real" issues
confronting Haskell developers on MacOS have to do with access to the
Cocoa etc. APIs, and in view of that it seems possibly sort of suicidal
to provide an install option that more or less guarantees that no solution
to that problem will work (because the free gcc package won't include
Cocoa.)

	Donn