Hi Herbert,
On 31 December 2014 at 15:25, Herbert Valerio Riedel
Hello Michael,
On 2014-12-31 at 15:10:37 +0100, Michael Snoyman wrote:
tl;dr: Now that ghc (the library) doesn't depend on Cabal (the library), can we remove Cabal from the global package database installed with GHC?
[...]
For both of these reasons, I think we should limit the number of packages included in the global package database. One seemingly small step we could do on that front is not include extraneous packages. In GHC 7.10rc1, that includes Cabal and xhtml:
btw, haskeline and terminfo should be considered as well, according to your argument.
both packages are in the global package database, but could just as easily be removed from there and installed by users. The motivation for that would be to avoid problem (1) above.
However, as for xhtml, haskeline and terminfo, we had to register/expose them in the global pkg DB due to
Thanks for pointing to the root explanation. Though as noted in that ticket by Joachim, there was another solution to this problem: simply install DSO's in a location that wouldn't clash with where distros typically install packages themselves. The other solution is to simply statically link the GHC binaries that would otherwise require these DSO's. Is the reason why those solutions were not chosen in the end documented anywhere? As Michael points out, every additional package forcefully installed into the global db by GHC is yet another potential source of problems for users when installing libraries. Including when doing so in a sandbox! (because global packages leak inside sandboxes). Best, Mathieu