What I am looking for is a HOWTO for installing haskell on linux, specifically a
GHC 6.10.4 haskell-platform-2.0.2 on Centos 5.4 using Leksah as the IDE, and developing
a wx application for running on linux and windows. If anyone could point me towards
something like that showing libraries needed and hoops to jump through then that would be great. But if not here's a rant about the problems:-


I read an article recently (from 2006 I think, so rather outdated) which was talking about
why there were more problems with haskell on windows than with haskell on linux and
the conclusion said that it is because more people develop haskell on linux than on
windows.

I thought great, I'd rather use linux anyway so I'll give it a try. What I found was a huge
headache and not much to help out with any problems.

My linux of choice is centos (I want stability over features) and I use the first CD only
of the latest 5.4 to install a minimal system, then use yum to put on only what I need.
That formula has worked well for many other systems I have set up, so that is what
I want to do again. I do that so all my systems start from the same place and I can
script the necessary install steps to get to a working system for whatever the purpose.

I found the whole need to jump through so many hoops frustrating and rather a waste
of my time. The developers of the libraries are the people who know what you need to
run their libraries so a little help from them wouldn't be missed. Comparing my headache
to the installation of the latest GHC 6.12.1 and cabal-install was a breeze mainly because
of the bootstrap.sh which does the heavy lifting for you. That would be nice in every library.

If each library developer could include something like that which would install necessary
external libraries, preferably which could be called as a prerequisite in the Cabal install
process, then it really would make a huge difference.

So far I am finding haskell to be a wonderful language and am really enjoying learning
it, but my experience compared to when I was looking at Erlang is that the benefits of
the language are diminished by the hassle of the infrastructure around the platform.