Re: [Haskell-cafe] Cabal install on Windows 7

Yes, it's true that most people tended to be administrators on their own Windows desktops, but since Vista, this has changed. Now in Vista, some people still forced admin rights, to get rid of the many annoying dialog boxes that popped up for every tiny task that might be a security breach. But it seems that under Windows 7 this is less intrusive, so we might consider having the Haskell Platform work well by default without assuming admin rights? Or at least the installer should clearly tell you about it, or provide an option. On Wed, Sep 9, 2009 at 2:28 PM, Duncan Coutts wrote:

On Tue, 2009-09-08 at 09:58 -0500, Jeff Wheeler wrote:

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On Tue, Sep 8, 2009 at 9:17 AM, Peter Verswyvelen wrote:

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Ouch, right, I forgot the default is global. It works fine with cabal install --user. And of course I could have edited the default config file, setting user-install: True

Well, maybe for newbies this might be a bit confusing.

Yep, I agree. I'm not sure why Cabal defaults to --global on Windows, but I found it quite counter-intuitive having come from a Linux environment. I forgot about the different default for some time.

It was because last time we discussed this, the Windows users seemed to be of the opinion that things were simpler with global installs since the %PATH% would be right by default and "everyone runs as Administrator anyway". That may well be different now.

If the Windows users can come to a consensus on whether the default should be global or user, then we can easily switch it. The same applies for the default global or user installation paths.

If there are any Windows users who understand the Windows permissions system then the Cabal hackers would appreciate some help. As it is the Cabal hackers have no access to Vista or Win7 and cannot test what is actually going on with Windows permissions or pop-up windows prompting whether it's ok to do this or that.

Duncan