John Meacham wrote:
On Wed, Aug 27, 2008 at 10:18:59PM +0100, Duncan Coutts wrote:
So I accept that we do not yet cover the range of configuration choices that are needed by the more complex packages (cf darcs), but I think that we can and that the approach is basically sound. The fact
that we can automatically generate distro packages for hundreds of packages is not insignificant. This is just not possible with the autoconf approach.
This is just utterly untrue. autoconfed packages that generate rpms, debs, etc are quite common.
Can you give an example of how this works? I would expect autoconf scripts to be completely missing the necessary metadata to do this.
As for programs written in haskell, I don't want people's first impression of haskell being "oh crap, I gotta learn a new way to build things just because this program is written in some odd language called 'haskell'" I don't care how awesome a language is, I am going to be annoyed by having to deal with it when I just want to compile/install a program. It will leave a bad taste in my mouth. I would much rather peoples first impression be "oh wow, this program is pretty sweet. I wonder what it is written in?" hence they all use ./configure && make by design rather than necessity.
On the flip side, ./configure && make is completely useless on native windows (i.e. without cygwin, mingw or the like) platforms, whereas cabal works everywhere GHC does. Cheers, Ganesh ============================================================================== Please access the attached hyperlink for an important electronic communications disclaimer: http://www.credit-suisse.com/legal/en/disclaimer_email_ib.html ==============================================================================