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[Adam Foltzer]

A couple points and a question; please bear with the scattershot:

There appears to be a point of view, where the cabal thing is a stagnant
> piece
> of technology that only serves to split the community and confuse newcomers
> by detracting them from the easier, better way.


> In such a view, it wouldn't be too big a leap to come to an understanding,
> that phasing out cabal from all avenues does a good service to the
> community.


If anyone does indeed have this view, please be assured that it is far from
universal. Cabal is essential for many Haskell workflows. I and other
practitioners use Stack for some projects and Cabal for others because both
tools have their strengths, weaknesses, and mutually unique capabilities.
The view that Cabal is stagnant is very outdated, most notably with respect
to the overall pace and vigor of the Cabal issue tracker, and the
excitement around the `cabal new-build` Nix-style commands.

-1. The topmost method will target beginners of the language and
>  should be Stack even if HP comes with Stack.


Many beginners will be picking up a copy of a book, or working through an
established curriculum. While the cutting edge of published guides and
course curricula may have converted to Stack, there is a vast quantity of
material for beginners that assumes you can type `ghci` and `cabal install`
at the prompt. Which particular materials to recommend to a beginner is a
matter of reasonable debate, but the best support we can give to those
beginners as stewards of the infrastructure is to highlight an option that
allows beginners to quickly succeed with the option of their choice.

should be Stack even if HP comes with Stack.


What is the reasoning here? How does having other tools bundled take away
from the new user experience?

On Sun, Aug 28, 2016 at 3:17 PM, Ganesh Sittampalam <ganesh at earth.li> wrote:

> +1 - that seems like the simplest way of preserving the existing intention.
>
> On 27/08/2016 06:05, Adam Foltzer wrote:
> > +1
> >
> > Since the HP Minimal fits such a similar niche, perhaps we could adapt
> > the existing minimal installer language in-place to point to HP Minimal,
> > rather than removing it. Then we could modify the existing HP section
> > in-place to clarify that it refers to HP Full.
> >
> > On Fri, Aug 26, 2016 at 9:50 PM, Jason Dagit <dagitj at gmail.com
> > <mailto:dagitj at gmail.com>> wrote:
> >
> >     Hello all,
> >
> >     I just realized that the Minimal installer listed first on the
> >     Downloads page (https://www.haskell.org/downloads
> >     <https://www.haskell.org/downloads>) is deprecated and "dead". This
> >     creates an unfortunate situation where our top suggested way to get
> >     haskell immediately tells the user it's dead.
> >
> >     I think that we should remove mention of the minimal installer ASAP
> >     on the grounds that the HP now comes in minimal and full variants.
> >
> >     Furthermore, I would like to make the recommendation that we list
> >     the HP above other methods as even the minimal HP installer ships
> >     with stack (at least on windows it does).
> >
> >     Between the two changes, I think the first one is crucial and the
> >     second one is merely reasonable.
> >
> >     Thanks,
> >     Jason
> >
> >
> >
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> >
> >
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