Hi Andres, Thanks for your detailed reply -- it is much appreciated.
Independent of concrete bugs, who's making these decisions? Can I use cabal-install-0.14.0 on projects working with older platforms if I want to?
Out of the box you get a set of tools that avoids known problems and complies with the particular platform. It is easy to override this in the configuration file. I expect to add commands to carry out that reconfiguration soon.
Not a problem in Nix(OS) either. Indeed, for each compiler version I have standard "plain" and "platform" profiles installed on my machine,
Excellent!
You still have to say at some initial point what version you want to use, I hope? Otherwise, I can't see how it could be detected.
Indeed. It can be done statically (by configuring the directory) or dynamically (by setting an environment variable). I think I am getting a feel for how Nix works. As I understand it Nix provides the user with fine control of the combination of packages that can be installed in a profile. A user can maintain many profiles and switch between them. (As I have been saying) I like it. Most of the issues I have been addressing in the hub system are concerned with managing the Haskell user package database. Each project needs to know where to find the tools and where to find the global package database but they are generally static and come pre-packaged in the configuration file. The real action in the Hub system lies in managing the user package database. As I see it the developer's project configuration belongs in the source code repository. Once the developer has checked out the work tree the tools should take care of the rest. (And the tools behave as normal in the absence of such configuration.) Everything I have been trying to do has been geared towards this and helping the developer to manage the development environment. Cheers, Chris