[Haskell-community] Haskell Platform as the default recommendation considered harmful

[Christopher Allen]

The issue is that Platform installs packages into the global package
database, usually causing conflicts if you're building a package that needs
something newer.

The point isn't abandoning, it's changing the default recommendation on the
Haskell.org site to things that work out of the box more often for users
until Platform is fixed.

I haven't used a hypothetical Platform that includes Stack, it's going to
depend entirely on how well it works. If it's equivalent to the minimal
installs we've been directing people towards (nothing extra in the global
pkg db) but with Stack included, then that'd probably be fine.

That's not here _now_, so let's fix the website.

People pushed back on this and the committee has chosen to ignore it, again
and again, now the excuse of "oh a fix is coming" is about to be used to
push it off again. The downloads page should never have been changed to
emphasize Platform again to begin with because it hadn't been fixed yet.

You don't expect us to believe the current presentation is neutral, do you?
(Attached screenshot) You make the alternatives to Platform sound like a
construction kit, not the means of installing Haskell that has become the
default recommendation for _many_ because of the problems with Platform
over the years.

>especially for new users interested in using frameworks with complex
dependency structures.

Really? Complex dependency structures?

The committee has been bulldozing over the concerns of end-users for too
long and too many times. How is this the committee a body acting on behalf
of the community when everything the community says appears to go nowhere,
even on something as straight-forward as making sure the recommendations
are what works best and most often?


On Mon, Sep 21, 2015 at 10:06 AM, John Wiegley <johnw at newartisans.com>
wrote:

> >>>>> Christopher Allen <cma at bitemyapp.com> writes:
>
> > 1. ghc-pkg
> > 2. The global vs. user package databases
> > 3. Cabal
> > 4. What Platform does to their build environment
>
> > New Haskell users are least equipped to understand errors caused by:
>
> > 1. Package version conflicts
> > 2. Something innate to their install, rather than something wrong with
> their
> >    package constraints.
>
> Unless I am mistaken, every one of these points relates to the usage of
> cabal
> after installing the platform, rather than to the Platform itself?
>
> Once Stack is in the platform, do you agree it will rectify every concern
> you
> mentioned? If so, I'd rather not abandon the platform, only to be seen
> re-adopting it after a few months.
>
> John
>



-- 
Chris Allen
Currently working on http://haskellbook.com
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