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

On Wed, Sep 9, 2009 at 1:28 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.

I think it's morally right to run as user by default. Yes, the windows culture has some legacy that may, on occasion, make it slightly harder to use "well behaved" programs, but it's fairly minor these days. -- Sebastian Sylvan