[Haskell-cafe] best way to use ghc-7.0 under debian stable

[Erik de Castro Lopo]

Hi,

briand at aracnet.com wrote:

> Currently debian stable installs ghc 6.12.1.

Is there any reason you're not using say Debian testing? The
Debian Haskell Group (of which I am one of the less active
members) is doing a magnificent job in bringing Haskell 
packages to Debian in the form of proper Debian packages.

Debian testing already has ghc-7.0.3 and a huge bunch of
libraries.

> I'd like to use the latest version of repa which is built
> on ghc 7.0, and my attempts to placate cabal's complaints
> about the installation of various packages isn't going anywhere.

If you are willing to give up Debian packages for all Haskell
related stuff you can install the haskell platform from a
binary tarball and then use cabal to manage the various Haskell 
packages.
 
> It's not obvious to me that there's an advantage to using
> debian for ghc

Personally, I consider Debian stable really only for critical
production servers and low maintenance desktop systems.

For a developer, Debian testing or Debian unstable (which is
really much more stable than the name suggests) is a better
option.

Finally, there is the option of pulling Debian source packages
from Debian unstable, building them and loading them into your
own private repository. I have done that for instance to get
ghc-6.12.3 onto a bunch of Ubuntu 8.04 systems. If you are
familiar with the Debian packaging system and running a
repository, this can work quite well.

HTH,
Erik
-- 
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Erik de Castro Lopo
http://www.mega-nerd.com/