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

[Greg Hale]

Voting for option #4 for now, in order to give stack a longer test-of-time.
Stack may evolve to be more universally adopted, or changes to cabal may
alleviate the complaints about HP. It seems wise to see what happens and to
limit the turn-over of preferred install options confronting new Haskellers.

On Thu, Sep 24, 2015 at 3:43 PM, Adam Foltzer <acfoltzer at gmail.com> wrote:

> I am traveling/conferencing and cannot keep fully up to date with this
> conversation, but I'd like to appreciate the work of the folks contributing
> to this thread. I'm happy that the creation of this mailing list has opened
> up these processes to a broader audience. My preference here is option 4
> for now, with the hope that the upcoming HP changes will render moot the
> split between these options.
>
> On Thu, Sep 24, 2015 at 2:22 PM, Boespflug, Mathieu <m at tweag.io> wrote:
>
>> Hi John,
>>
>> this is a nice summary of all options. May I suggest the following
>> refinements to the summaries:
>>
>> "
>> There are three widely used ways to install the Haskell toolchain on
>> supported platforms. Currently these are:
>>
>> * Minimal installers: install just GHC (the compiler) in a global
>> location on your system, using your system's package manager. (On
>> Windows and OS X, also installs build tools.)
>> * Stack: nothing is installed globally, except the stack command.
>> Stack is a project-centric build tool that will automatically download
>> and manage compiler and library versions locally on a project by
>> project basis.
>> * Haskell Platform: installs all of GHC (the compiler), cabal-install
>> (a build tool),  misc tools and a starter set of libraries in a global
>> location on your system.
>>
>> If you opt for the minimal installer option for your platform, you'll
>> likely still need to install one or more build tools (cabal-install or
>> stack) separately.
>> "
>>
>> The important point is that these options only differ in what gets
>> installed globally, as opposed to (semantically speaking)
>> locally-within-your-project (stack, cabal-install+sandboxes) or
>> locally-within-your-homedir (cabal-install sans sandboxes). There
>> ought be a paragraph somewhere near the top discussing upfront the
>> tradeoffs, which include:
>>
>> * globally installed resources are conveniently and straightforwardly
>> available to all users, and need only be downloaded once for all
>> users. But,
>> * globally installed resources are inflexible: it's hard to have
>> multiple versions installed simultaneously, _because conflicts tend to
>> arise_. This is particularly bad in the case of globally installed
>> libraries.
>>
>> I think this paragraph should specifically mention the problems
>> related to HP as it stands today. That paragraph can be removed once
>> the HP no longer installs libraries globally.
>>
>> In my mind, it doesn't really matter what order things are in, from
>> the moment that the main differentiators of each option are crisply
>> and clearly defined. That said, the rationale behind the order above
>> is:
>>
>> * minimal first, because that's what people normally expect (get the
>> compiler, no bells and whistles).
>> * HP last, because unless you're a student and the instructor
>> specifically told you to download the HP, chances are you're going to
>> run into trouble with this option (will change in the future, at which
>> point we'll just have HP + minimal anyways).
>>
>> Any other order should work just as well.
>>
>>
>>
>> On 24 September 2015 at 07:20, John Wiegley <johnw at newartisans.com>
>> wrote:
>> > 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
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > Haskell-community mailing list
>> > Haskell-community at haskell.org
>> > http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/haskell-community
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>
>
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