Thanks for all that. Some good suggestions. I've linked the results in the ticket on this issue so someone can re-read all the suggestions in detail when they come to update the behaviour (hopefully for 0.6.4 or something). http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/hackage/ticket/289#comment:17 Duncan On Thu, 2009-04-23 at 09:48 +0200, Thomas Davie wrote:
The results in the poll seem to have stabilised now, so I'll tell you what happened...
For user installs: 103 For global installs: 52 Others: 9
Interesting Ideas: ------------------------ • Claus made the suggestion that there be no default, instead that cabal asks you which you prefer the first time you run, or directs you to the configuration file. • Many users made the suggestion that cabal should install globally when running as root, and for a user when running as a user, possibly also displaying a prominent message about what's going on.
Conclusions: ------------------ Most people do indeed want user installs, but a very much not insignificant population want global installs. Perhaps one of these other suggestions is the way forward?
Bob
p.s. I personally very much like Claus' idea.