Re: [Haskell-cafe] GHC maintenance on Arch

Please stay on topic, this is *not* a discussion about Haskell Platform[1], it's a discussion on ArchHaskell[2]. Please read up on the mailing list archives first, and then, if you still feel there's a need to discuss HP in ArchHaskell (which isn't the same thing as Arch itself) then please start a new thread.

/M

[1]: http://www.haskell.org/platform/(http://www.haskell.org/platform/) [2]: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ArchHaskell (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ArchHaskell)

On Mon, Oct 29, 2012 at 2:53 PM, Brandon Allbery wrote:

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On Mon, Oct 29, 2012 at 5:56 AM, Magnus Therning wrote:

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Now I'm going to run the risk of upsetting you quite a bit by being completely blunt.

Indeed.

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You come across in your mail like someone who has thought through your own situation, but fail to see the larger picture. You do know *your*

May I ask you a question, then?

Does the Haskell Platform have any reason to exist?

Supposedly, the Haskell community backs the Haskell Platform as the way

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most users should be using the Platform. Yet we have here a vendor

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which does not support it, and newcomers who notice this and question it are chastised for not thinking about the needs of other people. This suggests that the Haskell Platform is unimportant and perhaps disruptive to some significant group of people... is this so?

And then, looking at your own message, I must ask: have you considered

To be clear, the project ArchHaskell has little or no relation to my original post.  If I understand correctly, ArchHaskell is a set of Arch uses who attempted to repackage the packages in hackage in the AUR.  This addresses issues of package management that are unrelated to my complaint.  My complaint is that Arch currently does not support having two versions of GHC installed and GHC does not support backwards compatibility.  The current method of always updating GHC to the latest version, discarding the old version is useful to the most hard core bleeding edge types. An alternative model for those of us that need a consistently usable system is not well supported.  Currently updating ghc the "normal way" always breaks your build system.  Arch has addressed this issue with a number of other packages.  Perhaps the best comparison would be ghc<https://www.archlinux.org/packages/ extra/x86_64/ghc/> verse linux<https://www.archlinux.org/packages/core/i686/ linux/>.  With linux, we have a "linux" package and a "linux-lts" package.  These are the same, but linux-lts gets updated slightly less often and with less expedition.  This problem has been had in Arch, it's been solved, and we should take the example of these other cases I have provided and make two ghc packages, so that there is a standard supported sane way to use ghc on arch linux.  This isn't a problem that affects me personally these days. As an advanced user I don't really have any trouble working around the issue.  But I'd like Arch to be inviting to newbies and to have what most of us more experienced users implement manually by default. Timothy ---------- Původní zpráva ---------- Od: Malcolm Wallace Datum: 29. 10. 2012 Předmět: Re: [Haskell-cafe] GHC maintenance on Arch "I think you will find that the Original Poster did not ask about ArchHaskell, but rather about Haskell on the Arch platform. He was completely unaware of ArchHaskell as a project. This might be a source of some confusion, and help to explain divergent attitudes. Regards, Malcolm On 29 Oct 2012, at 14:41, Magnus Therning wrote: that platform that

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the Platform is aimed at the great many people who do not have large amounts of expertise maintaining their own personal Haskell ecosystem. Or are your needs so important that these people must in fact be told to deal?

Or, to phrase in your own words:

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You come across in your mail like someone who has thought through your own situation, but fail to see the larger picture.

-- brandon s allbery kf8nh sine nomine associates allbery.b@gmail.com ballbery@sinenomine.net unix/linux, openafs, kerberos, infrastructure http://sinenomine.net (http://sinenomine.net)

-- Magnus Therning OpenPGP: 0xAB4DFBA4 email: magnus@therning.org jabber: magnus@therning.org twitter: magthe http://therning.org/magnus(http://therning.org/magnus)

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