Hi, briand@aracnet.com wrote:

Currently debian stable installs ghc 6.12.1.

Is there any reason you're not using say Debian testing? The Debian Haskell Group (of which I am one of the less active members) is doing a magnificent job in bringing Haskell packages to Debian in the form of proper Debian packages. Debian testing already has ghc-7.0.3 and a huge bunch of libraries.

I'd like to use the latest version of repa which is built on ghc 7.0, and my attempts to placate cabal's complaints about the installation of various packages isn't going anywhere.

If you are willing to give up Debian packages for all Haskell related stuff you can install the haskell platform from a binary tarball and then use cabal to manage the various Haskell packages.

It's not obvious to me that there's an advantage to using debian for ghc

Personally, I consider Debian stable really only for critical production servers and low maintenance desktop systems. For a developer, Debian testing or Debian unstable (which is really much more stable than the name suggests) is a better option. Finally, there is the option of pulling Debian source packages from Debian unstable, building them and loading them into your own private repository. I have done that for instance to get ghc-6.12.3 onto a bunch of Ubuntu 8.04 systems. If you are familiar with the Debian packaging system and running a repository, this can work quite well. HTH, Erik -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Erik de Castro Lopo http://www.mega-nerd.com/

I'm wondering what the best way to maintain the latest ghc while using debian stable.

here's what I usually do: * install ghc from binary package, * build haskell-platform from source. * when necessary, get more recent haskell packages via cabal J.W.

Hi Brian,

Currently debian stable installs ghc 6.12.1.

Testing also doesn't have the new ghc. Here's how I do it: I have a prefix $HOME/local/haskell, where I installed the ghc binaries (downloadable at the ghc main site.) Just use ./configure --prefix=$HOME/local/haskell. Then use the same ./configure command for the Haskell platform. I like to keep stuff easily uninstallable, which is why I chose to have a separate prefix, but you can also just dump into /usr/local. The manual version doesn't require a lot of maintenance, since ghc versions and Haskell platform versions aren't very frequently released. Also, you'd like to migrate to a new version of your compiler consciously anyway, so might as well make that a manual step, seeing as you'll probably read CHANGELOG while it installs :-) Just put your prefix in your path (or don't, if you installed in /usr/local) and you'll have a very low overhead, recent Haskell version. Installation is quick and easy, since you don't have to compile GHC. Regards, Aleks