[Haskell-community] Request for comment: New haskell.org download page

[John Wiegley]

As mentioned earlier, I've been working on a draft version of the new Haskell
download page in consultation with Simon PJ, Michael Snoyman, and Gershom
Bazerman. The goal has been twofold:

  a) add stack as an explicit option, and

  b) add text to each option indicating clearly what it provides and where to
     get further help, so users can understand the options and make an
     informed choice.

We've sought to keep the text factual, rather than imply that one option is
"best" for any particular class of user, since opinions vary so widely on this
point.

At the following link, you'll find a draft version of the new page for
comment:

    https://gist.github.com/jwiegley/153d968ddfc9046ee4c9

Hopefully it can go live on haskell.org next week, so please contribute your
edits here, or by pull request. The goal is to explain each option so that
people can make an informed decision.

However, the order of presentation does imply that whatever comes first is
"preferred" even if that is not the intent. The order currently given is HP,
Stack, Minimal. Chris has already made a few points about changing this order,
so let's continue that discussion and see where it leads us.

Bear in mind that this is (hopefully) only an interim state. The plan is to
add Stack to the Platform, and render the Platform minimal, which will
consolidate this page down to a single, recommended download path.

At the bottom of the gist are incomplete sections on third party libraries and
alternate installation approaches. These have yet to be written. The hope is
to resolve the top content first and sort the rest out after; however, ideas
for that content is most welcome too.

Thank you,
  John Wiegley