rustom writes:

I am not sure how to resolve this: use cabal install and 'preferably use a distro'

My preference is that if my distro has a package that I want and the latest such version (or a maintainer can be prompted to get latest version in there), then I use the distro package. Otherwise, I use cabal-install. This results in me using distro packages exclusively at home (since I help maintain the Haskell packages for Gentoo) and cabal-install at uni (since my machine has an old Ubuntu install on it that they're going to update "any day now" :@ ).

In any case with cabal install pivotal I get

cabal: There is no package named pivotal. Perhaps you need to run 'cabal update' first? (this was just after a cabal update)

Well, where did you get pivotal from? If it isn't on Hackage but is cabalised, you can download, unpack it and then within that directory just run "cabal install".

Finally: Is it better to take up these (kind of) questions on the ghc list rather than here?

No, the GHC mailing list is more towards development of GHC.

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2. Is it better to install haskell-platform or is it better to have a minimal install of ghc and then use hackage/cabal [Or is this a type- wrong question :-) ]

In general, I recommend you stick with your distribution's packages as much as possible (assuming they're kept up to date) and only resort to cabal-install when necessary; distribution packages typically interact with the system (in terms of non-Haskell dependencies, etc.) better.

-- Ivan Lazar Miljenovic Ivan.Miljeno...@gmail.com IvanMiljenovic.wordpress.com _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-C...@haskell.orghttp://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe

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-- Ivan Lazar Miljenovic Ivan.Miljenovic@gmail.com IvanMiljenovic.wordpress.com