As mentioned earlier, I've been working on a draft version of the new Haskell
download page in consultation with Simon PJ, Michael Snoyman, and Gershom
Bazerman. The goal has been twofold:
a) add stack as an explicit option, and
b) add text to each option indicating clearly what it provides and where to
get further help, so users can understand the options and make an
informed choice.
We've sought to keep the text factual, rather than imply that one option is
"best" for any particular class of user, since opinions vary so widely on this
point.
At the following link, you'll find a draft version of the new page for
comment:
https://gist.github.com/jwiegley/153d968ddfc9046ee4c9
Hopefully it can go live on haskell.org next week, so please contribute your
edits here, or by pull request. The goal is to explain each option so that
people can make an informed decision.
However, the order of presentation does imply that whatever comes first is
"preferred" even if that is not the intent. The order currently given is HP,
Stack, Minimal. Chris has already made a few points about changing this order,
so let's continue that discussion and see where it leads us.
Bear in mind that this is (hopefully) only an interim state. The plan is to
add Stack to the Platform, and render the Platform minimal, which will
consolidate this page down to a single, recommended download path.
At the bottom of the gist are incomplete sections on third party libraries and
alternate installation approaches. These have yet to be written. The hope is
to resolve the top content first and sort the rest out after; however, ideas
for that content is most welcome too.
Thank you,
John Wiegley
I'm sorry to announce that this year haskell.org was not accepted for the
2016 Google Summer of Code.
There has been a lot of turnover over the last 3 years as they have rotated
in and out new organizations, including many that have been in the program
as long as us, so while this isn't entirely unexpected, it is
disheartening. As this comes on the tail of our most successful year in the
program, the news was particularly devastating to all involved.
We do not expect this to be a permanent condition. Many organizations
rotate back in and out of the Summer of Code each year.
Operationally, this raises two main concerns:
The first is that there will be a rather sharp dip in income for the next
year for haskell.org. Last year's GSoC accounted for $9500 worth of income
towards managing servers and the like, but we will not receive such a
booster shot this year.
The second is that we absolutely do not want the infrastructure we have in
place around the Summer of Code to fall away. We had 50 mentors register
last year!
To address both of these concerns, we are exploring running our own
self-funded *Haskell Summer of Code *this year*. *In December, we
incorporated haskell.org as a 501(c)(3) non-profit. This now enables us to
pay for work directly. We should be able to fund at least one slot out of
pocket from existing haskell.org funds and fund additional slots with
donations.
https://wiki.haskell.org/Donate_to_Haskell.org
More information will be forthcoming as we work out the details.
Please feel free to contact me if you think you can help or if you have any
questions or concerns.
-Edward Kmett
