Re: ANNOUNCE: GHC version 6.10.1 - MacOS installer

On Wed, Nov 19, 2008 at 1:28 AM, Manuel M T Chakravarty wrote:

Jason Dagit:

On Wed, Nov 5, 2008 at 5:36 PM, Manuel M T Chakravarty wrote:

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Ian Lynagh:

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On Tue, Nov 04, 2008 at 09:02:12PM -0500, Brandon S. Allbery KF8NH wrote:

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On 2008 Nov 4, at 20:26, Jason Dagit wrote:

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On Tue, Nov 4, 2008 at 4:26 PM, Manuel M T Chakravarty wrote:

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Are you sure it does deinstall the 6.8 compiler?

After installing 6.10, there should be a 608/ and a 610/ directory. This certainly happens on my Mac and I am not aware of an option to change that behaviour.

I expect if you used the OSX installer then /Library/Receipts is screwing you (it wipes the old files listed in the .bom file). Try finding and removing the receipt directory and bom file before installing.

The only file I can see that looks relevant is /Library/Receipts/boms/org.haskell.glasgowHaskellCompiler.ghc.pkg.bom

Wouldn't removing it make uninstall impossible?

In fact, if you did manage to get 2 versions installed, how would /Library/Frameworks/GHC.framework/Tools/Uninstaller know which version to uninstall? Wouldn't it only know how to uninstall the version it came with? I'd suggest that the overlapping file "Uninstaller" could be why the older version gets removed, but that wouldn't explain why Manuel can install both at once.

A current limitation of the MacOS package system is that it does not support uninstalling of packages; cf

http://developer.apple.com/documentation/DeveloperTools/Conceptual/SoftwareD...

This is not a big drama on MacOS, as MacOS encourages the distribution of software packages as "bundles":

http://developer.apple.com/documentation/CoreFoundation/Conceptual/CFBundles...

This essentially means that instead of sprinkling files all over the file system (as is common in other OSes), MacOS applications and frameworks (Mac-speak for libraries) are kept in a single directory. Uninstalling then means doing an rm -rf on that directory.

Unfortunately, some applications (including GHC and Apple's Xcode IDE) can't be entirely contained in a single directory. In the case of GHC, we want symlinks in /usr/bin. The established way of uninstalling such applications is by supplying an Uninstaller script, just as I did for GHC. (Apple does the same for Xcode.)

The purpose of the Uninstaller script is too completely remove GHC.framework from a machine - not just to remove one version. In fact, if more than one version of GHC is installed, the Uninstaller will refuse to run and require the manual removal of all versions, but the current (easily achieved by a "rm -rf /Library/Frameworks/GHC.framework/Versions/<version>"). The main feature of the Uninstaller script is to get rid of all symlinks pointing into GHC.framework. The framework itself is just deleted by a "rm -rf" as expected. (It also removes the above mentioned receipt file.)

So, to directly answer the above questions: * The package manger (which uses the receipts) can't uninstall and the uninstaller script doesn't need the receipt. So, even after deleteing the receibt, you can still uninstall. * The Uninstaller can uninstall any version (at least as long as no symlinks are put into new directories outside of the bundle that the Uninstaller doesn't know about).

Is there an update on this thread? I would still like to have my cake and eat it too, meaning ghc 6.8.3 and ghc 6.10.1. As far as I know the installer hasn't been updated and if I try again I will lose my copy of 6.8.3.

Sorry, but for the moment, my (rather limited knowledge) of the MacOS packaging system is exhausted, and currently I don't have the time to search the web or experiment to try to learn more. It would be helpful to have the input of somebody who has more experience with MacOS packages. Manuel

Okay. That's fine, the OSX installer system sounds odd. I don't want to fight with it myself. I just want to upgrade ghc and I was getting pressure to do so and I tried the .tar.bz version, but I had some annoying experiences that I can share. So, the page here: http://www.haskell.org/ghc/download_ghc_6_10_1.html#macosxintel Has only this as installation instructions: This is a binary distribution for Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard), prepared by Christian Maeder. It needs libedit.2.dylib, libncurses.5.dylib and libgmp.3.dylib under /opt/local/lib/. I had no idea how to do the install or how to satisfy the requirements. By pestering others I learned that you install libraries into /opt/local using MacPorts. The next challenge was learning what to do with the .tar.bz file once it was downloaded. I found an INSTALL file inside the tarball with some instructions thankfully. I wish the download page said something about this. It was quite a mystery. I only looked in the tarball because I was frustrated. I don't like downloading and untarring things if i don't know what to expect inside them. But, I still think I did something wrong because the first thing I tried to build with 6.10 complained that -lgmp was not found. I have checked, it's installed and I saw the ./configure script for the 6.10 installation find it. Quite baffling. I guess I'm stuck on 6.8.3 for a while longer. Jason