Simon Marlow wrote:
Esa Ilari Vuokko wrote:
Issue 1: Cabal puts (at least) docs under Program Files\Common Files - this separates docs from other parts of the program by logical placing,
Not quite true: for an executable, on Windows, docs currently go by default into $prefix\Haskell\$pkgid. See:
http://www.haskell.org/ghc/docs/latest/html/Cabal/builders.html#setup-config...
Yes. I should have said library docs.
For a library, data files go in C:\Program Files\Common Files\$pkgid. There's a very good reason for this: a library cannot discover its installation location like an executable can, because it could be linked in to an executable anywhere on the system. Hence if a library needs access to auxiliary data files, they better be in a fixed place in the filesystem. A library with data files cannot be fully relocatable at install-time.
This might be some unix trick, but in Windows you can at least * Use resource strings * Use registry And indeed, if that's the purpose, Common Files is pretty much the right directory. But, this is mainly for *widespread* libraries. In general it is much better that the application does the installing of library's data files and then tells library where they are. I don't really care, I think. Libraries that are not prepared for relocation are not ready for publishing in Windows, IMHO.
However, we do need to change where docs go (they don't have to go in $datadir, and they can be relocated at install-time).
Assuming docs are haddock generated, aren't they actually pretty much fixed because of links? Best regards, Esa