On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 7:43 AM, Magnus Therning wrote:

What OS is it for? (I'm inclined to believe it's windows, but I can't be sure.)

In either case, why distribute it as a _completely_ statically linked executable, wouldn't putting together an installer just as good?

It would. But actually, while going to work, I was wondering if a sort of Haskell application deployer would be a good idea ? It'd package Haskell apps with the necessary dynamic libraries, etc, depending on the target system of course, just like NSIS or so does. Except if nobody can't find a good reason not to use tools like NSIS which are already portable IIRC. -- Alp Mestan http://blog.mestan.fr/ http://alp.developpez.com/

On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 10:15 AM, Magnus Therning wrote:

It could be a good extension to Cabal (not the tool), currently there's the target 'sdist', maybe add a target 'wininst'. Similar to how Python's distutils have targets for MSI and Windows installers.

Actually, I was more thinking about a separate tool. Something you'd just install, from cabal/apt/pacman/whatever, using some external system tools to check out dependencies of the application, then packaging everything and putting some install.sh script around for linux, and a nice installer under Windows, etc. It is just an idea, but the main point here is that it'd just be "simple". (of course, the idea I describe may fail heavily for packaging very complex and heavy apps, IMO, but I think there are workarounds) PS : shouldn't we move this discussion to -cafe ? -- Alp Mestan http://blog.mestan.fr/ http://alp.developpez.com/

No love for OS X? On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 5:13 PM, Magnus Therning wrote:

On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 9:53 AM, Alp Mestan wrote:

...

On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 10:15 AM, Magnus Therning wrote:

...

It could be a good extension to Cabal (not the tool), currently there's the target 'sdist', maybe add a target 'wininst'.  Similar to how Python's distutils have targets for MSI and Windows installers.

Actually, I was more thinking about a separate tool. Something you'd just install, from cabal/apt/pacman/whatever, using some external system tools to check out dependencies of the application, then packaging everything and putting some install.sh script around for linux, and a nice installer under Windows, etc. It is just an idea, but the main point here is that it'd just be "simple". (of course, the idea I describe may fail heavily for packaging very complex and heavy apps, IMO, but I think there are workarounds)

Linux ought to be simple, a script based on output from ldd would most likely do it.  Or even better, run prelink on the executable (I suspect it'd work, but I'm not sure).  Though for Linux I don't understand why anyone would do this, since it's so simple to put together distro packages :-)

IMNSHO Windows is the only OS where it's useful to create binary installers.  There are quite a few tools out there for that, I'd expect most of them would be suitable for Haskell binaries.

/M

-- Magnus Therning                        (OpenPGP: 0xAB4DFBA4) magnus＠therning．org          Jabber: magnus＠therning．org http://therning.org/magnus         identi.ca|twitter: magthe _______________________________________________ Beginners mailing list Beginners@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/beginners

On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 10:29 AM, Alp Mestan wrote:

On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 11:19 AM, Lyndon Maydwell wrote:

...

No love for OS X?

No knowledge of OS X binary/library interactions, actually :-)

Magnus : I agree about Linux. At least, a cabal package is enough, since there are a lot of cabal-to-<insert distro package format here> tools around. For Windows, which tool do you know that'd make it for Haskell apps ?

I don't know of any Haskell-specific ones, but I'd be surprised if you can't make NSIS or WiX create an installer for a Haskell binary. /M -- Magnus Therning (OpenPGP: 0xAB4DFBA4) magnus＠therning．org Jabber: magnus＠therning．org http://therning.org/magnus identi.ca|twitter: magthe

I was thinking more along the lines of how reasonable it would be to ask a non-technical user to build a program you wish to distribute from source. On linux / bsd /etc it would probably be unsurprising, but it may be asking too much of windows and mac users. On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 5:30 PM, Magnus Therning wrote:

On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 10:19 AM, Lyndon Maydwell wrote:

...

No love for OS X?

No, not from me personally ;-)

Seriously, I simply don't know anything about OSX.  I've never owned a McComputer.  Though I suspect OSX isn't quite as broken as Windows in relation to installers.

/M

-- Magnus Therning                        (OpenPGP: 0xAB4DFBA4) magnus＠therning．org          Jabber: magnus＠therning．org http://therning.org/magnus         identi.ca|twitter: magthe