Quoth Manuel M T Chakravarty
Sean Leather: ...
To simplify the process of installing GHC and to support people with versions of Mac OS X older than the most current. We want to spread the Haskell love as far as possible.
The only simplification is that people who haven't got Xcode yet need to install two packages instead of just one.
However, for people who already have got Xcode installed, it means that they get two versions of all the dev tools, headers, etc. Then, compiling a C file (eg, as part of a Haskell project) by directly invoking gcc or by compiling it via ghc will use different compilers, headers, etc. That quickly leads to annoying and hard to debug problems.
Given that almost every developer on a Mac will be in the second group, you are not simplifying matters, you are complicating them.
I would expect the reverse in many cases - initial install without Xcode, followed by upgrade to Xcode. Equally problematic, though. As for numbers, it depends on how you define "developer" - installs without Xcode might well be more numerous, and people with such installs might be more numerous on the email lists etc., but in terms of the platform per se, they're kind of dead weight. Donn