[Haskell-cafe] When did it become so hard to install Haskell onWindows?

[lonetiger at gmail.com]

Hi Pedro,

I’m the maintainer of those chocolatey packages.

➢ First, I have to subscribe to a newsletter? Really? I guess this is entirely optional, but the instructions don't make it sound so. 

Step 1 is completely optional and you don’t have to subscribe to any news letter.

➢ Then I have to know what powershell.exe is, use an administrative prompt, and enter scary commands in it.

Powershell has been the standard shell in Windows for well over the past decade. Every single script from Microsoft or third parties come with powershell for automation.
It’s understandable that you may not know it since your primary platform isn’t Windows. But it’s been included in every single Windows version for the past 13 years.

An administrative prompt is nothing different than running sudo or clicking on that installer that you *assumed* not to be scary because you didn’t see the actions it was performing.
That scary looking command is nothing but a curl command allowing the one time execution of a script from a remote source. As in a script that’s not physically on your machine.

So what exactly makes this scary? Is it because

Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process -Force; [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol -bor 3072; iex ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))

Is more verbose than

curl -sSL https://path.to.some.script/ | sh

or because the technologies used while completely standard on Windows aren’t known to the casual user?

Thanks,
Tamar

From: José Pedro Magalhães
Sent: Saturday, April 25, 2020 04:24
To: haskell
Subject: [Haskell-cafe] When did it become so hard to install Haskell onWindows?

Hi,

I haven't used Haskell in my personal computer in a while. I decided to install it again. I used the Haskell Platform in the past, so I went for that again - and a quick Google search on "install haskell windows" brings up the HP page, so I thought I was on the right track.

At the HP page for Windows, I'm greeted with this:


In the past I'd just download an installer which would take care of things - now it seems to be more complicated. But fine, I followed the link to configure Chocolatey. That's where it starts getting really scary:


First, I have to subscribe to a newsletter? Really? I guess this is entirely optional, but the instructions don't make it sound so. Then I have to know what powershell.exe is, use an administrative prompt, and enter scary commands in it.

I gave up at this stage. But going back to the HP page, it appears that even this wouldn't be enough, because I would still need to follow "the instructions at haskellstack.org to install stack". The link to haskellstack.org takes me to a 403 Forbidden.

I honestly don't want this to sound like a rant. I genuinely would like to understand why this multi-step, multi-tool, multi-website process was introduced, how it is superior to a single installer, and whether this is really the process we want newcomers to the language have to follow.


Thanks,
Pedro

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