Am Sonntag 19 April 2009 13:09:17 schrieb Thomas Davie:
I don't understand what makes user installs more convenient. Certainly, my preference would be for global all the time I expect something that says it's going to "install" something to install it onto my computer, like any other installation program does. What is it that makes user installs more convenient in this situation?
You don't need 'sudo' access for user installs. This means that 'cabal install' works out of the box on every system, without needing admin/root privs (esp. important for students).
But students will be used to needing to configure this in every other installation system out there they need to tell it to install in their user directory. Personally I find it more convenient to have the "install" program do what it says it does! Install it!
But it does install it, only not where you want it. Just for the record, I (no student, my own computer, sole user) prefer user-installs and cabal's default behaviour. Makes it so much easier to get rid of things I don't want anymore without any fear of buggering my system because something depends on it.
This would save confusion about old tools that do things globally, and not confuse students, because they're all already used to giving extra flags to make install not install things system wide.
Yes, it is bad that the runhaskell Setup interface has a different default. But, as Duncan said, too late to change it now.
Bob