[Haskell-cafe] Can cabal be turned into a package manager?

[Bardur Arantsson]

On 12/12/2012 06:01 PM, Janek S. wrote:
> In the recent months there was a lot of dicussion about cabal, dependency hell and alike. After 
> reading some of these discussions there is a question I just have to ask:
> 
> Why not create a package manager (like rpm or apt) for Haskell software?
> 
> I've been using Linux for years. Software for Linux is mostly written in C and C++. There are 
> thousands of libraries with lots of dependencies and yet:
> a) Linux distributions manage to have package repositories that are kept in a consistent state
> b) Linux package managers can avoid dependency hell, automatically update to new packages, etc.
> Linux people did it! Is there any technical issue that prevents Haskell people from doing exactly 
> the same thing? Or are we just having non-technical problems like lack of money or developers?
> 

Well, one big issue is that Linux distribution packagers have control of
the entire stack. A (hypothetical) Haskell package manager wouldn't.

Typical package managers also restrict you to exactly one version of any
given package. This can be a severe limitation for developers.

(There are more issues.)