On Sat, Nov 7, 2009 at 10:05 PM, Glurk wrote:

Hi,

I'm a beginner to both Cabal and Linux. I'm a bit confused as to whether I need to be using Cabal when installng packages.

I'm running Ubuntu 9.10, and from the Synaptic Package Manager, I can select various Haskell packages to install - will this install the package correctly, or is there something I need to do in Cabal as well ?

Thanks ! :)

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). So, in short, use Synaptic until you come to a situation where you need something that isn't packaged for Ubuntu yet. Even then I'd suggest you first check for a source package in Debian. Only if everything else fails should you reach for cabal. /M -- Magnus Therning (OpenPGP: 0xAB4DFBA4) magnus＠therning．org Jabber: magnus＠therning．org http://therning.org/magnus identi.ca|twitter: magthe

I'm a beginner to both Cabal and Linux. I'm a bit confused as to whether I need to be using Cabal when installng packages.

There's no real confront between then, as cabal will default to install its packages in your home directory. Follow this rule in Ubuntu: install what's available from Ubuntu repositories (using Synaptic) and, whenever you want, need or feel like doing it, install from cabal. If something goes wrong for any reason, just rm ~/.cabal and you get back to what you have in a fresh install. (If you are a begginer in Haskell: also do use cabal system to package your own programs. This will give you a good understandment on how the package system work, and let you more confortable to experiment with advanced language features.) Best, Maurício