On Tuesday, September 13, 2016 at 9:47:20 PM UTC+2, Richard Eisenberg wrote:Thanks, many, for explaining better ways to interact directly with GHC after using a `stack setup`. Perhaps, then, all that’s stopping someone like me from liking the ease of `stack setup` is a little missing PR (as in, public relations). I understand that many people want to keep GHC cloistered away to ease version swapping, but others (like me) want GHC available front and center.
Other minor points:
`stack env` does not work for me: my version of stack does not know how to `env`.
That's correct—stack env was a feature request.
The warning on `stack ghci` doesn't happen usually, but I'd say that's a bug (probably because it's a new install)?
I use stack (and have contributed a bit recently), but I agree there's a few things stack could do better for this workflow.
And the transition has a rather annoying learning curve—stack ghci and stack ghc are not the same as ghci/ghc. I think that's on purpose to support a project-based workflow, and it has upsides, but it's a transition pitfall.
Lots of things *are* explained in https://docs.haskellstack.org/en/latest/faq/, but you do need learn a few things from scratch.
You want stack exec ghc and stack exec ghci, and arbitrary options require a double dash `--` — use `stack ghc -- --version` or `stack exec -- ghc --version`. And I'm afraid the command syntax is mostly frozen by now.
To support a compiler-based workflow, there are a few things planned—I opened an issue to collect them, starting from Simon Marlow's recent email:
https://github.com/commercialhaskell/stack/issues/2546
BTW, a system-installed GHC already works if you stick to one (and only build projects that need that). But I'd love to support multiple system-installed GHCs and being able to pick the one you need.
As others already explained, giving access to stack-installed GHCs can be problematic—they're going to work, in part, exactly because you can't install in their package database.
Having stack install system-wide GHCs would IMHO risk opening a can of worms—having working binaries for all Linux distros requires some work, system installers would be harder and most users would dislike them.