On 29 November 2015 at 21:46, Michael Orlitzky
On 11/29/2015 02:39 PM, Omari Norman wrote:
So there's a distribution out there where end users pull source from Hackage, pull source for every dependency, and then build it all with GHC? If they're not doing what distributors like Debian does--building binaries--then what's the point of distributing at all?
Gentoo, Nix, and FreeBSD all have tools that will convert a hackage package into a distribution package automatically.
I'm not saying you need to rely on e.g. Debian upstream to create packages for you (I certainly don't), but you do need to have "system" packages for everything installed. This actually isn't very hard with those automated tools I mentioned earlier.
OK, that might be a (somewhat) reasonable alternative to using `cabal-install` or `stack` as a package manager — for users of those distros only. I know the mantra `cabal` is not a package manager, and that usually read as "`cabal` doesn't want to support its users' needs". I'm on OS X + Homebrew though. Also, as long as you just want to upgrade, a working `cabal upgrade` would be enough (and maybe within reach after the upcoming cabal changes); `stack upgrade-all` could also do the job. Bigger problems are removing packages and intermediate build products. -- Paolo G. Giarrusso - Ph.D. Student, Tübingen University http://ps.informatik.uni-tuebingen.de/team/giarrusso/