
What I am looking for is a HOWTO for installing haskell on linux, specifically aGHC 6.10.4 haskell-platform-2.0.2 on Centos 5.4 using Leksah as the IDE, and developinga wx application for running on linux and windows. If anyone could point me towardssomething 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 But if not here's a rant about the problems:- I read an article recently (from 2006 I think, so rather outdated) which was talking aboutwhy there were more problems with haskell on windows than with haskell on linux andthe conclusion said that it is because more people develop haskell on linux than onwindows. I thought great, I'd rather use linux anyway so I'll give it a try. What I found was a hugeheadache 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 onlyof 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 whatI want to do again. I do that so all my systems start from the same place and I canscript 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 wasteof my time. The developers of the libraries are the people who know what you need torun their libraries so a little help from them wouldn't be missed. Comparing my headacheto the installation of the latest GHC 6.12.1 and cabal-install was a breeze mainly becauseof 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 necessaryexternal libraries, preferably which could be called as a prerequisite in the Cabal installprocess, then it really would make a huge difference. So far I am finding haskell to be a wonderful language and am really enjoying learningit, but my experience compared to when I was looking at Erlang is that the benefits ofthe language are diminished by the hassle of the infrastructure around the platform.

Hi Adrian Is Centos close enough to RedHat to use Fedora packages? The Haskell-Platform seemingly is available as a package: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/users/packages/haskell-sig Leksah has a fairly large set of dependencies so installing it might take some work - particularly where it depends on packages outside the Haskell Plaform (GTK, etc...) you might well want versions from Hackage rather than ones prepackaged for Fedora. It might be worth asking on the Fedora-Haskell-devel mailing list for better advice. Best wishes Stephen

Hi Adrian,
Were you able to get the installation of Leksah done ? I haven't tried
installing leksah from cabal in centos myself but it would be good to know
whether it is possible to get leksah built without having to upgrade gtk and
glib in Centos 5.4. In that case, we might be able to use some rpms from
fedora haskell platform.
On Wed, Feb 17, 2010 at 6:34 PM, Stephen Tetley
Hi Adrian
Is Centos close enough to RedHat to use Fedora packages?
The Haskell-Platform seemingly is available as a package:
https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/users/packages/haskell-sig
Leksah has a fairly large set of dependencies so installing it might take some work - particularly where it depends on packages outside the Haskell Plaform (GTK, etc...) you might well want versions from Hackage rather than ones prepackaged for Fedora. It might be worth asking on the Fedora-Haskell-devel mailing list for better advice.
Best wishes
Stephen _______________________________________________ Beginners mailing list Beginners@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/beginners
-- Regards Lakshmi Narasimhan T V

Hi Lakshmi,
I've had two attempts at getting it going, the first I didn't get very far beforedeciding to give other, more up to date, linuxes a go, but had little luck onthat front. Next time around I got further but ran out of time. The problem isthat I want to spend my time writing software (and I have a windows systemup and running) not trying to fight to get the system working. I really didn'tthink it would be too much to ask that a simple install script would exist,or at least a HowTo for one of the more popular linuxes (RedHat).
I will have another look at it this weekend and see how far I get. If I manageto succeed I will document the process and post it to the wiki. Haskell seemsto be a great language and there are lots of helpful people in the communitywho are willing to help newbies like myself get off the ground, but when the'system' fights back as much as it does I'm not surprised that not many peopleuse haskell, it's just easier to use something else.
--- On Wed, 17/2/10, Lakshmi Narasimhan

Hi, maybe you can be a little more specific, as to what problems you ran into? I just installed Leksah on Ubuntu via "cabal install" and (using the proper constraints) it worked like a charm. Install info for Leksah is here: http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Leksah_Installation I didn't bother to install the haskell-platform though. Up to now I could get all the packages I needed from the Ubuntu repos or Hackage without problems. Best regards, Marc Adrian Adshead wrote:
Hi Lakshmi, I've had two attempts at getting it going, the first I didn't get very far beforedeciding to give other, more up to date, linuxes a go, but had little luck onthat front. Next time around I got further but ran out of time. The problem isthat I want to spend my time writing software (and I have a windows systemup and running) not trying to fight to get the system working. I really didn'tthink it would be too much to ask that a simple install script would exist,or at least a HowTo for one of the more popular linuxes (RedHat). I will have another look at it this weekend and see how far I get. If I manageto succeed I will document the process and post it to the wiki. Haskell seemsto be a great language and there are lots of helpful people in the communitywho are willing to help newbies like myself get off the ground, but when the'system' fights back as much as it does I'm not surprised that not many peopleuse haskell, it's just easier to use something else. --- On Wed, 17/2/10, Lakshmi Narasimhan
wrote: From: Lakshmi Narasimhan
Subject: Re: [Haskell-beginners] Linux install walkthrough To: adrianadshead@yahoo.co.uk Cc: beginners@haskell.org Date: Wednesday, 17 February, 2010, 13:30 Hi Adrian,
Were you able to get the installation of Leksah done ? I haven't tried installing leksah from cabal in centos myself but it would be good to know whether it is possible to get leksah built without having to upgrade gtk and glib in Centos 5.4. In that case, we might be able to use some rpms from fedora haskell platform.
On Wed, Feb 17, 2010 at 6:34 PM, Stephen Tetley
wrote: Hi Adrian
Is Centos close enough to RedHat to use Fedora packages?
The Haskell-Platform seemingly is available as a package:
https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/users/packages/haskell-sig
Leksah has a fairly large set of dependencies so installing it might
take some work - particularly where it depends on packages outside the
Haskell Plaform (GTK, etc...) you might well want versions from
Hackage rather than ones prepackaged for Fedora. It might be worth
asking on the Fedora-Haskell-devel mailing list for better advice.
Best wishes
Stephen
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http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/beginners
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Adrian, The Haskell Platform is still relatively new, and therefore binary support is not so good for Linux yet. But you don't actually lose much from what the Platform would give you if you use the GHC 6.10 binary releases from http://haskell.org/ghc/ The fact that this old-fashioned way works so well has also slowed adoption of the Platform on Linux. This worked nicely for me on Ubuntu before the Haskell Platform existed. Once GHC is installed, you then install cabal-install by hand using its bootstrap script. Add $HOME/.cabal/bin/ to your PATH, and then you can install any package easily with the 'cabal install' command. There is no essential difference between this setup and the Platform, except you start with fewer packages. Give that a try - You should find it works without fuss. I suggest you use 6.10 (not 6.12) as it's the most stable at present. There are two Linux binary variants - depending on what libraries are present on your system (one RedHat flavoured and one Debian flavoured). This is explained on the download page. Steve Adrian Adshead wrote:
Hi Lakshmi,
I've had two attempts at getting it going, the first I didn't get very far before deciding to give other, more up to date, linuxes a go, but had little luck on that front. Next time around I got further but ran out of time. The problem is that I want to spend my time writing software (and I have a windows system up and running) not trying to fight to get the system working. I really didn't think it would be too much to ask that a simple install script would exist, or at least a HowTo for one of the more popular linuxes (RedHat).
I will have another look at it this weekend and see how far I get. If I manage to succeed I will document the process and post it to the wiki. Haskell seems to be a great language and there are lots of helpful people in the community who are willing to help newbies like myself get off the ground, but when the 'system' fights back as much as it does I'm not surprised that not many people use haskell, it's just easier to use something else.
--- On *Wed, 17/2/10, Lakshmi Narasimhan /
/* wrote: From: Lakshmi Narasimhan
Subject: Re: [Haskell-beginners] Linux install walkthrough To: adrianadshead@yahoo.co.uk Cc: beginners@haskell.org Date: Wednesday, 17 February, 2010, 13:30 Hi Adrian,
Were you able to get the installation of Leksah done ? I haven't tried installing leksah from cabal in centos myself but it would be good to know whether it is possible to get leksah built without having to upgrade gtk and glib in Centos 5.4. In that case, we might be able to use some rpms from fedora haskell platform.
On Wed, Feb 17, 2010 at 6:34 PM, Stephen Tetley
> wrote: Hi Adrian
Is Centos close enough to RedHat to use Fedora packages?
The Haskell-Platform seemingly is available as a package:
https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/users/packages/haskell-sig
Leksah has a fairly large set of dependencies so installing it might take some work - particularly where it depends on packages outside the Haskell Plaform (GTK, etc...) you might well want versions from Hackage rather than ones prepackaged for Fedora. It might be worth asking on the Fedora-Haskell-devel mailing list for better advice.
Best wishes
Stephen _______________________________________________ Beginners mailing list Beginners@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/beginners
-- Regards Lakshmi Narasimhan T V
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_______________________________________________ Beginners mailing list Beginners@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/beginners

I had another go at getting it going.
leksah 0.6.1 requires gtk2hs >= 0.10gtk2hs 0.10.1 requires gtksourceview >= 2.2gtksourceview 2.2 requires gtk+ >= 2.12gtk+ >=2.12 requires upgraded glib
So the answer is no, it is not installable on Centos withoutupgrade to gtk and glib.
The fedora 12 install works and I have leksah and my wx appworking, but unfortunately I use NX to open a remote sessionto the server and leksah does something to crash the connection,so I can not use it anyway.
Adrian.
--- On Wed, 17/2/10, Lakshmi Narasimhan
participants (5)
-
Adrian Adshead
-
Lakshmi Narasimhan
-
Marc D. Migge
-
Stephen Blackheath [to Haskell-Beginners]
-
Stephen Tetley