ashley:

Don Stewart wrote:

...

* Arch now has 609 Haskell packages in AUR.

Have you thought about doing this for Ubuntu? If you know how to automatically generate packages, you could set up a PPA (private package archive) on Launchpad.

I've spoken with Jeremy Shaw, who has similar systems in place, based also on Cabal (and cabal-install), for generating native packages for Debian & Ubuntu. However, we do need some Ubuntu champions who can work incrementally, over a long time, to keep packages up to date on their systems. Automation makes this a *lot* easier, so you may only need one or two people, motivated to work on their distro. -- Don

Pray tell, what kind of feats are expected of such a champion?

No answer. I guess my failed attempt at chivalrous-sounding wit killed the message. I'll rephrase: Does the job consist of: Maintaining an independent repository of Haskell packages configured and compiled for the current (probably also in-development) version of Ubuntu? Getting (some of) these packages added into the distro itself? Tracking bug reports, routing them upstream when appropriate? Submitting patches upstream? Is it something "anyone" can do or would one need "official" ties to Ubuntu (e.g a MOTU)? Also, how much exposure to the packages' source would it imply? My employer is rather paranoid about its coders being "contaminated" by third-party code =P. While I'm asking --- maybe we should target Debian first/also/instead? Cheers -- Ariel J. Birnbaum

On Tue, Oct 14, 2008 at 9:33 AM, Titto Assini wrote:

Can anyone explain why, now that we have cabal and therefore package installation is just a short "cabal install X" away do we need distribution specific binary packages?

I personally prefer my hackage packages freshly cooked ...

In my mind it all comes down to _user_ convenience. As a developer I don't mind using Cabal to pull and install in the latest and greatest from Hackage. However, I _really_ don't see my wife ever doing the same just to try out the greatest window manager through time: Xmonad. Cabal+Hackage is great, but they don't take away the need for distro pacakges. The story is the same for Haskell as it is for Perl, Ruby, Python, etc... I am sure there are other reasons in favour of packaging for distros, but this is the one _I_ care about :-) /M -- Magnus Therning (OpenPGP: 0xAB4DFBA4) magnus＠therning．org Jabber: magnus＠therning．org http://therning.org/magnus identi.ca|twitter: magthe

2008/10/14 Titto Assini :

Hi Magnus,

you wife must be very advanced if she plans to install xmonad, I read the installation docs recently and recoiled in horror :-)

Installing xmonad in Debian Sid is extremely simple, thanks to it being packaged in the distro.

To go back to the subject under discussion, I can perfectly see the need for having ready made distribution packages for: - the haskell compilers - cabal - a few programs that have end user appeal and that are used beyond the haskell community (darcs and xmonad spring to mind)

But why bother to build binary distributions for the hundreds of packages that are just raw ingredients to the haskell development process?

It seems to me that it adds confusion (two ways of installing things rather than one) while reducing flexibility and 'freshness' of installation.

To me it adds simplicity. I might be developing an in-house tool at work, having all the libraries available in distros makes my work easier. Having libraries available also lowers the threshold for apps written in Haskell to be included in distros. An example in point is my tiny package omnicodec, which relies on dataenc. Getting both packages into Debian is more work (for a non-DD like myself) than getting a single package in. I also think it reduces confusion for newbies. Instead of having to learn yet another packaging tool (Cabal/cabal-install) they can get full access to Haskell and its libraries using a packaging tool they already are familiar with. It lowers the threshhold for people who want to try out Haskell. Your comment on "flexibility and freshness" suggests that you come down close to Arch rather than Debian-stable. Many others would be interested in stability and convenience rather than using the bleeding edge versions of modules. There are distros that cater for both these camps, and any other you can think of. I'm not sure how to use cabal-install to cater for everyone. Playing the devil's advocate I'd say that cabal (not the library Cabal, but the tool cabal in cabal-install) is only needed on systems with pacakge managers that are broken or completely missing (e.g. Windows). As such cabal is a waste of time and shouldn't have been written at all; on many systems it's of no use, on the ones where it is useful it's a fix at the wrong level. Somewhat harsh, and not completely in line with my own opinion, but it can be argued that way. /M -- Magnus Therning (OpenPGP: 0xAB4DFBA4) magnus＠therning．org Jabber: magnus＠therning．org http://therning.org/magnus identi.ca|twitter: magthe

On Thu, Oct 16, 2008 at 8:12 PM, Duncan Coutts wrote:

On Tue, 2008-10-14 at 11:25 +0100, Magnus Therning wrote:

...

Playing the devil's advocate I'd say that cabal (not the library Cabal, but the tool cabal in cabal-install) is only needed on systems with pacakge managers that are broken or completely missing (e.g. Windows). As such cabal is a waste of time and shouldn't have been written at all; on many systems it's of no use, on the ones where it is useful it's a fix at the wrong level. Somewhat harsh, and not completely in line with my own opinion, but it can be argued that way.

I think they're actually complementary. Sure on Windows it's needed in place of a native packaging system, but even on systems like debian it's still needed in places. It's needed for packages that are too new or are not sufficiently mature or popular to have been packaged yet for the distro. There will always be such packages. Of course many ordinary users would be able to make do with the subset of packages that are provided by the distro and that's great.

Yes, that would actually be my opinion as well, when my devil hat is off. When putting it back on again though I'd say that the distro's own package manager should be used also in this case, e.g. new versions of stuff from Hackage should go into Debian experimental. Taking the hat off again, cabal-install strikes me as a lighter approach and more suited for bleeding-edge things. On top of that it's X-distro and X-platform. All good things! Enough of this schizophrenia. /M -- Magnus Therning (OpenPGP: 0xAB4DFBA4) magnus＠therning．org Jabber: magnus＠therning．org http://therning.org/magnus identi.ca|twitter: magthe