Re: [Haskell-community] Request for comment: New haskell.org download page

I am traveling/conferencing and cannot keep fully up to date with this conversation, but I'd like to appreciate the work of the folks contributing to this thread. I'm happy that the creation of this mailing list has opened up these processes to a broader audience. My preference here is option 4 for now, with the hope that the upcoming HP changes will render moot the split between these options. On Thu, Sep 24, 2015 at 2:22 PM, Boespflug, Mathieu wrote:

Hi John,

this is a nice summary of all options. May I suggest the following refinements to the summaries:

" There are three widely used ways to install the Haskell toolchain on supported platforms. Currently these are:

* Minimal installers: install just GHC (the compiler) in a global location on your system, using your system's package manager. (On Windows and OS X, also installs build tools.) * Stack: nothing is installed globally, except the stack command. Stack is a project-centric build tool that will automatically download and manage compiler and library versions locally on a project by project basis. * Haskell Platform: installs all of GHC (the compiler), cabal-install (a build tool), misc tools and a starter set of libraries in a global location on your system.

If you opt for the minimal installer option for your platform, you'll likely still need to install one or more build tools (cabal-install or stack) separately. "

The important point is that these options only differ in what gets installed globally, as opposed to (semantically speaking) locally-within-your-project (stack, cabal-install+sandboxes) or locally-within-your-homedir (cabal-install sans sandboxes). There ought be a paragraph somewhere near the top discussing upfront the tradeoffs, which include:

* globally installed resources are conveniently and straightforwardly available to all users, and need only be downloaded once for all users. But, * globally installed resources are inflexible: it's hard to have multiple versions installed simultaneously, _because conflicts tend to arise_. This is particularly bad in the case of globally installed libraries.

I think this paragraph should specifically mention the problems related to HP as it stands today. That paragraph can be removed once the HP no longer installs libraries globally.

In my mind, it doesn't really matter what order things are in, from the moment that the main differentiators of each option are crisply and clearly defined. That said, the rationale behind the order above is:

* minimal first, because that's what people normally expect (get the compiler, no bells and whistles). * HP last, because unless you're a student and the instructor specifically told you to download the HP, chances are you're going to run into trouble with this option (will change in the future, at which point we'll just have HP + minimal anyways).

Any other order should work just as well.

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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

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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

On 24 September 2015 at 07:20, John Wiegley wrote: that libraries and

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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 _______________________________________________ Haskell-community mailing list Haskell-community@haskell.org http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/haskell-community

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