While I did email Tamar off-list, I should probably also thank him
publicly. Packaging is a frustrating and often thankless part of Free
Software development, and I appreciate that I can help a university
teach Haskell to first-year students _at all_.
We do refresh the installation instructions each semester, and re-test
them before each run of the course to make sure they're up-to-date. Even
with direct links to installers and explicit step-by-step instructions,
I have been very surprised by the knots some students have managed to
tie their computers into, and while Chocolatey has given us teething
issues it also gives us a single set of commands to install
GHC/cabal-install/MSYS2 and a decent text editor.
-- Jack
Alec Theriault
I wanted to chime in with a bit of positiveness. I really appreciate the work that Tamar has put into the Chocolatey packages, and when I personally needed to debug a windows-only issue, I found the installation experience to be better than Haskell Platform (which I had previously used when in university). It was clearer to see what I was installing (and I was able to directly manage what I had installed through Chocolatey - including installing other GHC’s and Cabal's). The Chocolatey packages also make setting up CI for windows much simpler.
I can see why the new process is more complicated for university students who are accustomed to more GUIs and probably don’t have Chocolatey installed. Since there is a graphical installer for Chocolatey, couldn’t this mostly be solved by writing up more detailed setup instructions (including all the right GUI installer links and walkthrough) on the course’s home page site? The instructions could be reviewed once at the beginning of every term to make sure they are still accurate. That seems like the sort of thing that could eventually also be put on the official Haskell website.
Packaging software for windows, GHC in particular, is a pretty huge task. The volunteers who maintain this stuff are heroes, and it is disheartening that the only time this difficult work ever gets recognized is when people are angry something isn’t working as expected.
Alec _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list To (un)subscribe, modify options or view archives go to: http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe Only members subscribed via the mailman list are allowed to post.