Major installation failure and impossible to post to cabal-devel

20 May 2010

      Hello,

It took me about 3 hours and 7 attempts to post to this list, or any
similar mailing list. It seems after much sleuthing that my
registration did not go through (despite clicking on the confirmation
button on the confirmation link page), and the error message did not
indicate that. I would highly recommend saying instead of "Error: You
can't post" to instead say "Error: You don't seem subscribed to this
list. Please try re-subscribing and making sure you click the
confirmation button in the confirmation link page. If that fails, try
again.". I would also recommend having people actually subscribed to
cabal-devel-owner.

Additionally http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/hackage/register does not
really work -- it requires that you provide a username and password
*in order to register* with the username and password. If you fill out
this form, you will see a basic http auth popup appear, preventing you
from registering.

This basically means that people cannot contact the cabal-devel
community, nor the libraries@haskell.org community -- in any way
whatsoever.

If there is some sort of emergency-contact IRC channel, it may be a
good idea to link to it on Trac and the Cabal webpage.

My actual messages are below.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From:  
Date: Thu, May 20, 2010 at 9:00 PM
Subject: Re: cabal installation failure
To: mats.ahlgren@gmail.com

You are not allowed to post to this mailing list, and your message has
been automatically rejected.  If you think that your messages are
being rejected in error, contact the mailing list owner at
libraries-owner@haskell.org.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Mats Ahlgren 
To: libraries@haskell.org
Date: Thu, 20 May 2010 21:34:12 -0400
Subject: Re: cabal installation failure
Hello,

I have tried about 5 different ways to subscribe and send mail to the
cabal-devel@haskell.org mailing list, but to no avail.
Under instructions from http://www.haskell.org/cabal/ I am emailing
this list in hopes that it will reach the relevant people.

Issue #1 - impossible to contact Cabal devs (can't even post bugs on Trac):
...
sidenote: It seems no one is listening to
cabal-devel-owner@haskell.org . Moreover, it seems that it is
impossible to subscribe via the mailmain interface, and not even possible
to subscribe via by sending "subscribe" to cabal-devel-request. This
made it nearly impossible to post to this list.
Issue #2:
...
...
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Mats Ahlgren 
To: cabal-devel@haskell.org
Date: Wed, 19 May 2010 01:34:01 -0400
Subject: cabal installation failure
Hello,
I've installed Cabal once in the past with no trouble. However I can
no longer do so.
I tried to install Cabal on a new computer:
- I visited http://www.haskell.org/cabal/download.html and got the
latest version
- I followed the directions in the README file
- No error messages were thrown, the process was "successful" and I
now have a ~/.cabal directory --but-- it doesn't seem as if I have a
'cabal' command in /usr/bin or /usr/local/bin or even anywhere in the
~/.cabal directory.
- There was no extra information in the README file; no examples of
how to proceed or sample usage
- I then followed the directions to view the user docs online. After
locating them, it seems there are no instructions for end-users, just
for people who wish to submit packages.
- I then looked at
http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/hackage/wiki/CabalInstall and noticed
there was another way to do this -- with a ./bootstrap.sh -- but this
file is missing in the latest version.
The end result is that even after 2 hours, I am unable to figure out
why Cabal is not working. If I was a new user, I wouldn't even know
what Cabal does.
I attempted to file a bug, but then saw I was unable to because the
Trac installation is protected with basic http authentication.
I write this out of concern, because these issues with documentation
(and what may be a critical bug) may make people shy away from Haskell
as a platform.
Also if anyone might have insight into how to fix this, it would be
much appreciated; thank you.
Sincerely,
Mats
platform:
Linux, Ubuntu "Karmic", GHC version 6.10.4; further information
available upon request
The dozens of obstacles I failed to overcome to post to the
cabal-devel mailing list is quoted below.

Sincerely,
Mats

On Thu, May 20, 2010 at 9:29 PM, Mats Ahlgren  wrote:
...
[attempt #4 to send this mail]
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Mats Ahlgren 
Date: Thu, May 20, 2010 at 9:25 PM
Subject: Fwd: cabal installation failure
To: cabal-devel@haskell.org
Original message forwarded below.
sidenote: It seems no one is listening to
cabal-devel-owner@haskell.org . Moreover, it seems that it is
impossible to subscribe via the mailmain interface, and not even possible
to subscribe via by sending "subscribe" to cabal-devel-request. This
made it nearly impossible to post to this list.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Mats Ahlgren 
Date: Wed, May 19, 2010 at 1:45 AM
Subject: Re: cabal installation failure
To: cabal-devel-owner@haskell.org
I feel this message was rejected in error due to a race-condition
where I sent it too quickly after registering. Please forward to list
or accept, thank you.
On Wed, May 19, 2010 at 1:00 AM,   wrote:
...
You are not allowed to post to this mailing list, and your message has
been automatically rejected.  If you think that your messages are
being rejected in error, contact the mailing list owner at
cabal-devel-owner@haskell.org.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Mats Ahlgren 
To: cabal-devel@haskell.org
Date: Wed, 19 May 2010 01:34:01 -0400
Subject: cabal installation failure
Hello,
I've installed Cabal once in the past with no trouble. However I can
no longer do so.
I tried to install Cabal on a new computer:
- I visited http://www.haskell.org/cabal/download.html and got the
latest version
- I followed the directions in the README file
- No error messages were thrown, the process was "successful" and I
now have a ~/.cabal directory --but-- it doesn't seem as if I have a
'cabal' command in /usr/bin or /usr/local/bin or even anywhere in the
~/.cabal directory.
- There was no extra information in the README file; no examples of
how to proceed or sample usage
- I then followed the directions to view the user docs online. After
locating them, it seems there are no instructions for end-users, just
for people who wish to submit packages.
- I then looked at
http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/hackage/wiki/CabalInstall and noticed
there was another way to do this -- with a ./bootstrap.sh -- but this
file is missing in the latest version.
The end result is that even after 2 hours, I am unable to figure out
why Cabal is not working. If I was a new user, I wouldn't even know
what Cabal does.
I attempted to file a bug, but then saw I was unable to because the
Trac installation is protected with basic http authentication.
I write this out of concern, because these issues with documentation
(and what may be a critical bug) may make people shy away from Haskell
as a platform.
Also if anyone might have insight into how to fix this, it would be
much appreciated; thank you.
Sincerely,
Mats
platform:
Linux, Ubuntu "Karmic", GHC version 6.10.4; further information
available upon request