On Tue, 2008-11-18 at 10:20 -0500, John Van Enk wrote:

This question isn't directly related to Haskell, but I figure some one might know here.

I want to deploy an application. I could either: 1) Tell people how to download GHC, have them check out the repository, have them install all the needed hackage packages, ... or 2) Give them a setup.msi/exe

I'm curious if any one has done this with a Haskell package. It seems that it's something that might make sense being integrated into Cabal (runhaskell Setup msi).

I think the right approach here is as a separate tool, like we have tools for generating native packages for rpm, deb and other distributions. Of course it only makes sense for applications, not libraries.

Either way, has some one deployed a Haskell binary as a MSI package?

Not MSI[1] but .exe yes. Here's an example: http://haskell.org/~duncan/gtk2hs/LSystemSetup.exe It is an installer (made with the free InnoSetup builder) for a simple graphical application that uses HOpenGL, Gtk2Hs and therefore Gtk+. It installs the application .exe the Gtk+ dll files and a data file for the GUI. Duncan [1] On a job many years ago I had to make an MSI installer and now hate them with a passion :-)