On Sat, Nov 7, 2009 at 4:50 PM, Magnus Therning
IMNSHO, cabal (the tool) is primarily for systems with broken, or non-existing package managers (read Windows). For other systems, including Ubuntu, people should use the native packaging system as far as possible, only reverting to cabal when that fails (for whatever reason).
I strongly disagree with this sentiment. OS package managers tend to lag behind in releases, assuming they have your package at all; this problem is severely compounded when you're dealing with a lesser-used language like Haskell. I always use cabal (which, IMHO, is a much better tool than similar tools for other languages, e.g., Python's easy_install), and believe OS package manager use should be discouraged for Haskell. (I'll grant that cabal needs an "uninstall" command, as well as a working "upgrade all".)