[Haskell-cafe] On Windows after I install the new cabal-install then when I do a cabal update it says there is a new ...

[Sven Panne]

2015-07-13 19:57 GMT+02:00 Michael Steele <mikesteele81 at gmail.com>:

> I disagree that this is a bug or misfeature in the Haskell Platform. The
> problem is caused by a quirk in how Windows works.
>

Hmmm, I think it can be argued that it*is* a bug/misfeature of the HP,
because people are obviously confused by the status quo, see the OP. The
whole idea behind the HP is giving people an easy and painless approach to
installing a useful Haskell ecosystem. Granted, the fact that the user part
of the PATH is appended to the system part (not *pre*pended) is exactly the
wrong way round in Windows, but an out-of-the-box system like the HP should
work around exactly such things, e.g. by setting user vars on the first run
etc.


> There are a few other options I didn't mention. One is to delete the
> global entry from the 'system' path variable and insert it into the 'user'
> path variable somewhere after the "%appdata%\cabal\bin" entry. The downside
> here is that other user accounts will be affected. Another option is to use
> a custom shortcut or execute a batch script which manually sets PATH
> variables as needed. This is the method I use personally.
>

Manually fiddling around with system settings/paths and reverting to
manually written batch scripts should not be necessary. If we expect that
from users, there's no point in having a HP. Don't get me wrong: Depending
on your workflow, doing exactly what you described might be the right
approach for power users, but that't not the target group.
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