[Haskell-community] haskell.org download page

[Chris Kahn]

A good downloads page should have two purposes. First and foremost it
should highlight "the" one recommended way to use Haskell. The current
page is very confusing. It should be an obvious choice that satisfies
newbies and the majority of jobbing Haskellers. It's the method that we
want to build the community around. It's the method that changed my
adventures getting started in Haskell from incredibly frustrating, to a
really easy and pleasant experience. And I think it's abundantly clear
that this is Stack.

Now it's great that everybody has different workflows, some people have
Cabal-only workflows, some people need the full Haskell Platform, some
people just want the latest binary X, etc. You're not the audience of
the prominent button at the top of the downloads page and you're
experienced enough to know how to find what you want. For these needs,
the downloads page should serve its second purposes, having a list or
table below the fold, where everyone can find these different packages
that they need to download, but where it does not distract or clutter
from the primary message.

And the case mentioned about newbies buying a book that uses GHCi,
shouldn't this book explain how to install GHCi and possibly include a
binary? And do we think so poorly of Haskell newcomers that we cannot
simply explain the command is "stack ghci" instead of just "ghci"? Or
the Stack installer automatically place a ghci script that secretly uses
Stack? My point is that I think this problem can be solved without
screwing up the downloads page.

That's my opinion, anyway!
Chris



On Tue, Aug 30, 2016, at 06:17 AM, Gershom B wrote:
> On August 30, 2016 at 6:23:36 AM, Simon Marlow (marlowsd at gmail.com)
> wrote:
> > > Can't we get rid of HP Full? I don't see a use for that any more.
> 
> I think it can be removed from a prominent spot in the downloads page.
> There are a variety of cases where people still seem to prefer it for
> some settings (especially those which may have limited ongoing network
> access), despite being warned that it is not typically recommended, so
> I think it makes sense to continue to provide it in some fashon,
> albeit less prominent, for the time being.
> 
> If I can scrape the time together today I’ll try to pull together some
> text for the whole downloads page to propose here for feedback, trying
> to take this discussion into account.
> 
> —Gershom
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