Don Stewart wrote:

Can I ask why you chose 2010.1.0.0 ?

That's easy; the installer is already on my harddrive.

I hope the download site for the HP isn't leading people astray.

Nope. I just hadn't noticed that what I downloaded a few months ago was no longer the latest, that's all.

It sounds to me like your life would be a lot easier if you knew about cabal-install's root-cmd configuration parameter! Open your .cabal/config file and uncomment and set:

root-cmd: sudo

I didn't know about this either. As an aside, is the cabal config file documented at all? I haven't been able to find any. That means it's easy to accidentally install everything with no documentation (why is that the default?) or without profiling libs, which will mess you up much later when you want profiling and now dependency checking won't help you reinstall everything. I was trying to turn on --global by default (which is another one of those traps... Setup.hs defaults to global but cabal doesn't... and ~/.cabal is not the most obvious place to look for your installed stuff), but couldn't find a way, and no documentation telling me how. Is there a way? And... is the 'cabal' command supposed to have a man page?

Ben Millwood wrote:

I think it's not completely a stupid idea to have profiling default off. I personally do not really enjoy the fact that I compile everything three times nowadays :)

Fair enough. However, having documentation off by default is just annoying... On that note, I just remembered something else: During the course of playing with all this Cabal stuff, I discovered that I had somehow acquired a global package index. As in, an HTML file that links to the documentation of *all* installed packages, not just the ones that come with GHC. And when I installed more packages, it seemed to add them to this index. Alas, removing packages doesn't remove them. I tried deleting the file to see if Cabal would rebuild it, and now I just have no file at all, and no idea how to get it back. Then again, all the links were broken anyway. They all had paths like "C:\Program Files\Haskell\...whatever", and Mozilla apparently expects them to say "file://C:/Program Files/Haskell/...whatever". It kept whining that "the C:\ protocol is not registered". Does anybody know anything about this feature?

Daniel Fischer wrote:

On Wednesday 18 August 2010 19:13:48, Andrew Coppin wrote:

...

On that note, I just remembered something else: During the course of playing with all this Cabal stuff, I discovered that I had somehow acquired a global package index. As in, an HTML file that links to the documentation of *all* installed packages, not just the ones that come with GHC. And when I installed more packages, it seemed to add them to this index.

Yes, when cabal runs haddock on a package, it generates a comprehensive index if none is present or expands it with the new docs. Quite cool that :)

It's something I've always _wanted_ Cabal to do, but this is the first time I've ever seen it happen. I don't know what particularly I did to make this happen, and now it seems to be gone, so...

...

Alas, removing packages doesn't remove them.

Since cabal isn't involved in removing packages, that can't be done.

I gathered. Apparently there's no "cabal uninstall" or even merely a "cabal unregister" yet... (There must surely be a ticket for that already?)

...

I tried deleting the file to see if Cabal would rebuild it, and now I just have no file at all, and no idea how to get it back.

Generally, until you know it's safe to delete, move or rename first, so if something breaks, it's not gone for good.

Well, the worst thing that can happen is I get no documentation, which isn't exactly a disaster. I'm just wondering how these files got created to start with; adding more packages doesn't appear to recreate it. I suppose I could try reinstalling all of them...

...

Then again, all the links were broken anyway. They all had paths like "C:\Program Files\Haskell\...whatever", and Mozilla apparently expects them to say "file://C:/Program Files/Haskell/...whatever". It kept whining that "the C:\ protocol is not registered"

Apparently, haddock links to absolute paths. That's of course not the right thing to do if the path begins with an invalid protocol specifier ("C:"). And it's annoying if you want to move the docs.

I imagine it's so that each package can be placed in a completely arbitrary place in the filesystem, and the links still work. I'd actually be surprised if these URLs work on Linux either; they don't appear to follow the requisit web standards.

On 19 August 2010 21:15, Andrew Coppin wrote:

Daniel Fischer wrote:

...

Yes, when cabal runs haddock on a package, it generates a comprehensive index if none is present or expands it with the new docs. Quite cool that :)

It's something I've always _wanted_ Cabal to do, but this is the first time I've ever seen it happen. I don't know what particularly I did to make this happen, and now it seems to be gone, so...

If you have documentation enabled then it is recreated every time you install a package. (Though only for user packages, since we have not yet worked out somewhere sensible we can stick a global index).

I gathered. Apparently there's no "cabal uninstall" or even merely a "cabal unregister" yet... (There must surely be a ticket for that already?)

Yup, there's a ticket for it.

Well, the worst thing that can happen is I get no documentation, which isn't exactly a disaster. I'm just wondering how these files got created to start with; adding more packages doesn't appear to recreate it. I suppose I could try reinstalling all of them...

If you have documentation enabled (ie use --enable-documentation on the command line, or have "documentation: True" in the ~/.cabal/config file) then docs get created for each package you install, and the haddock index/contents of all installed docs gets updated.

...

...

Then again, all the links were broken anyway. They all had paths like "C:\Program Files\Haskell\...whatever", and Mozilla apparently expects them to say "file://C:/Program Files/Haskell/...whatever". It kept whining that "the C:\ protocol is not registered"

Apparently, haddock links to absolute paths. That's of course not the right thing to do if the path begins with an invalid protocol specifier ("C:"). And it's annoying if you want to move the docs.

I imagine it's so that each package can be placed in a completely arbitrary place in the filesystem, and the links still work. I'd actually be surprised if these URLs work on Linux either; they don't appear to follow the requisit web standards.

You may be right, or perhaps URL syntax is just liberal enough to let unix style paths work. It's still a bug of course that we're not using the file:// protocol which makes it not work on windows. I filed it here: http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/hackage/ticket/516#comment:6 Duncan

Duncan Coutts wrote:

...

...

Yes, when cabal runs haddock on a package, it generates a comprehensive index if none is present or expands it with the new docs. Quite cool that :)

It's something I've always _wanted_ Cabal to do, but this is the first time I've ever seen it happen. I don't know what particularly I did to make this happen, and now it seems to be gone, so...

If you have documentation enabled then it is recreated every time you install a package.

That's what I was expecting to happen... but no. Each package gets its documentation generated, but the master index I deleted seems to be gone forever.

(Though only for user packages, since we have not yet worked out somewhere sensible we can stick a global index).

Uh... maybe that's it then? Yes, I think I changed it from local to global. It was putting all the binaries and documentation under Documents and Settings. I changed the install type to global, and it went back to putting stuff under Program Files\Haskell like it always used to. I'm not sure what "somewhere sensible" is supposed to mean; until I deleted it, the master index was under Program Files\Haskell\doc, right next to all the globally-installed packages. Or did you mean there isn't a good place on Unix?

Yup, there's a ticket for it.

In fact, there appears to be a ticket for every single thing I originally mentioned. And they're all ancient tickets too. So, yeah... nothing to do here. (Unless you're suggesting that I should try to actually *fix* these things. The way I figure it, if an army of developers who are already experts on the subject haven't been able to fix it yet, it must be extremely hard, and so there's no way *I* can fix it.)

If you have documentation enabled (ie use --enable-documentation on the command line, or have "documentation: True" in the ~/.cabal/config file) then docs get created for each package you install, and the haddock index/contents of all installed docs gets updated.

Right. I still get documentation for each package, just no master index. That's the way it always used to work, and that apparently is the way it works again now...

...

I imagine it's so that each package can be placed in a completely arbitrary place in the filesystem, and the links still work. I'd actually be surprised if these URLs work on Linux either; they don't appear to follow the requisit web standards.

You may be right, or perhaps URL syntax is just liberal enough to let unix style paths work. It's still a bug of course that we're not using the file:// protocol which makes it not work on windows. I filed it here: http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/hackage/ticket/516#comment:6

Yeah, I believe at least under HTTP, "/" refers to the root folder of the current server, so that probably works for an absolute path. "C:\" isn't going to be valid without a protocol spec. (I actually cannot remember now whether the Windows paths had forward or backward slashes.) I think either removing the drive spec or adding a protocol spec should fix this; the latter would seem more "correct". (Again, this is a Haddock issue rather than Cabal, isn't it?)

Ivan Lazar Miljenovic wrote:

Andrew Coppin writes:

...

(Unless you're suggesting that I should try to actually *fix* these things. The way I figure it, if an army of developers who are already experts on the subject haven't been able to fix it yet, it must be extremely hard, and so there's no way *I* can fix it.)

Or maybe they have other things to do (e.g. Duncan is working, finishing off his PhD thesis and answering queries like this; when do you expect him to get any hacking done? :p).

I wonder... How many people are actually working on Cabal? When I first started using Haskell, I got the impression that there were hundreds, maybe even thousands, of developers working on GHC. (After all, how else could you write such a huge codebase in less than two centuries?) But now it appears the number of active developers is nearer to 3. This is obviously a jaw-droppingly tiny number of people to be working on such a gigantic piece of software. If it's really true, it's amazing anything ever gets done at all! So now I wonder about Darcs, Cabal, Haddock, Hackage, and all those other big projects. Do they really have a bazillion people working on them? Or is it just two blokes in their spare time? (And, more importantly, how do you find out?)

Ivan Lazar Miljenovic wrote:

Andrew Coppin writes:

...

So now I wonder about Darcs, Cabal, Haddock, Hackage, and all those other big projects. Do they really have a bazillion people working on them? Or is it just two blokes in their spare time? (And, more importantly, how do you find out?)

Seeing as how we don't have a bazillion people using Haskell... ;-)

I don't know - how many packages are on Hackage now? That's a few GB of source code, right? It didn't write itself. ;-)

My understanding is that Cabal, Haddock, Hackage (as in the web infrastructure, etc.) and GHC all have a small core team of about 3 developers and a whole bunch of people who have committed patches at one time or another and might even do so on an irregular basis. Darcs seems to have a larger team behind it.

OK, wow. Makes you wonder how anything ever gets done at all, eh?

Daniel Fischer writes:

On Saturday 21 August 2010 14:57:26, Andrew Coppin wrote:

...

Ivan Lazar Miljenovic wrote:

...

Andrew Coppin writes:

...

So now I wonder about Darcs, Cabal, Haddock, Hackage, and all those other big projects. Do they really have a bazillion people working on them? Or is it just two blokes in their spare time? (And, more importantly, how do you find out?)

Seeing as how we don't have a bazillion people using Haskell... ;-)

I don't know - how many packages are on Hackage now? That's a few GB of source code, right? It didn't write itself. ;-)

How many people have hackage accounts? Much fewer than a bazillion (I think, how much is a bazillion anyway?). Some of them are *very* productive.

A Bazillion is an imaginary number meant to indicate something extremely large: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bazillion#-illion Since the population of the planet is roughly 6 Billion, I would guess that Andrew is under the miscomprehension that aliens make up the vast majority of Haskell users (or else he is taking into account everyone who will ever use Haskell as well, since after all Haskell will eventually replace all other inferior languages to become the One True Language!).

...

...

My understanding is that Cabal, Haddock, Hackage (as in the web infrastructure, etc.) and GHC all have a small core team of about 3 developers and a whole bunch of people who have committed patches at one time or another and might even do so on an irregular basis. Darcs seems to have a larger team behind it.

OK, wow. Makes you wonder how anything ever gets done at all, eh?

It's a kind of magic.

I believe Don wrote a successor to lambdabot to generate all of his libraries for him, and Galois is just a front to make it appear that multiple people are working on these libraries when in reality it's just his bot. -- Ivan Lazar Miljenovic Ivan.Miljenovic@gmail.com IvanMiljenovic.wordpress.com

Daniel Fischer wrote:

On Saturday 21 August 2010 15:35:08, Ivan Lazar Miljenovic wrote:

...

A Bazillion is an imaginary number meant to indicate something extremely large: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bazillion#-illion

Yes, but 'extremely large' numbers mean different things, depending on whether we talk about for example midges in Scotland (bazillion >= 10^20), people in a football stadium (bazillion >= 5*10^4) or people at your sister's wedding (bazillion >= 50).

So how much is a bazillion when it comes to Haskell programmers?

Three! -- Live well, ~wren

I wonder... How many people are actually working on Cabal?

When I first started using Haskell, I got the impression that there were hundreds, maybe even thousands, of developers working on GHC. (After all, how else could you write such a huge codebase in less than two centuries?) But now it appears the number of active developers is nearer to 3. This is obviously a jaw-droppingly tiny number of people to be working on such a gigantic piece of software. If it's really true, it's amazing anything ever gets done at all!

I haven't seen any studies about this, but my impression is that most successful open source projects will be doing well to have 3 full time contributors. There will be a much larger cloud of people who come and go and contribute a few patches, but if you've got 3 people working consistently, after a number of years that really starts to add up. Even in the closed source world... the (internal) application I work on really only has about 3 people who really understand the whole thing and wrote large parts of it. The rest of us hang out on the edges, fixing the odd bug or two. Looking at the ardour commits, it seems like basically two guys doing most of the work. When I looked at the gimp a number of years back, it was a similar story. With say python, it's maybe around 5 or so, but that includes a huge library. When you look at the core, the same names come back again and again. Anyone with experience of any other large successful open source programs care to support or refute? I do agree, though, that what Ian and the Simons (and the Ganeshs and Manuels and assorted MSR interns and...) have built over the years is remarkable and inspiring, not to mention very useful.

On 18 August 2010 18:13, Andrew Coppin wrote:

Then again, all the links were broken anyway. They all had paths like "C:\Program Files\Haskell\...whatever", and Mozilla apparently expects them to say "file://C:/Program Files/Haskell/...whatever". It kept whining that "the C:\ protocol is not registered".

Does anybody know anything about this feature?

Andrew, I just wanted to let you know that Cabal/cabal-install/hackage has a bug tracker: http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/hackage/ We rely on users reporting bugs so that we know there is anything wrong. There is a guest account so that anyone can file tickets. There is a search feature to see if anyone has reported a similar problem previously (though we prefer getting duplicates than no reports at all). For bugs that really annoy you, you can add your email address to the 'cc list so that you get notified when the ticket is updated. That also counts as a "vote" for that ticket, we take that into account when prioritising things. Thanks! Duncan

Andrew Coppin wrote:

I guess I just figured that since Cabal is used by hundreds of millions of people every single day, any little glitches I might have come across have already been seen by at least 1,000 people before me (and hence, the developers already know about it and just haven't had time to fix it yet).

Which is why, when filing a report, you scan/search the bug tracker first to make sure you're not filing a duplicate :) Just remember, those thousands of other people are probably thinking the same thing you are. This is well a well-documented phenomenon in more serious circumstances: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect -- Live well, ~wren

On 19 August 2010 03:13, Andrew Coppin wrote:

Ben Millwood wrote:

...

I think it's not completely a stupid idea to have profiling default off. I personally do not really enjoy the fact that I compile everything three times nowadays :)

Fair enough. However, having documentation off by default is just annoying...

My guess is that this is aimed at people who just want to use Haskell software (darcs, xmonad, etc.) and don't actually develop in Haskell. This saves some storage space and also compile times. -- Ivan Lazar Miljenovic Ivan.Miljenovic@gmail.com IvanMiljenovic.wordpress.com