...

...

...

...

"AF" == Adam Foltzer writes:

AF> Since the HP Minimal fits such a similar niche, perhaps we could adapt the AF> existing minimal installer language in-place to point to HP Minimal, rather AF> than removing it. Then we could modify the existing HP section in-place to AF> clarify that it refers to HP Full. +1 -- John Wiegley GPG fingerprint = 4710 CF98 AF9B 327B B80F http://newartisans.com 60E1 46C4 BD1A 7AC1 4BA2

Just to clarify, I don't believe anyone is proposing to make HP Full the first method, but rather to keep a minimal installer in the first position in the form of HP Minimal. On Sat, Aug 27, 2016 at 3:14 PM, Christopher Allen wrote:

-1 to make HP the first method.

On Sat, Aug 27, 2016 at 5:01 PM, John Wiegley wrote:

...

...

...

...

...

> "AF" == Adam Foltzer writes:

AF> Since the HP Minimal fits such a similar niche, perhaps we could adapt the AF> existing minimal installer language in-place to point to HP Minimal, rather AF> than removing it. Then we could modify the existing HP section in-place to AF> clarify that it refers to HP Full.

+1

-- John Wiegley GPG fingerprint = 4710 CF98 AF9B 327B B80F http://newartisans.com 60E1 46C4 BD1A 7AC1 4BA2 _______________________________________________ Haskell-community mailing list Haskell-community@haskell.org http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/haskell-community

-- Chris Allen Currently working on http://haskellbook.com _______________________________________________ Haskell-community mailing list Haskell-community@haskell.org http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/haskell-community

A couple points and a question; please bear with the scattershot: There appears to be a point of view, where the cabal thing is a stagnant

piece of technology that only serves to split the community and confuse newcomers by detracting them from the easier, better way.

In such a view, it wouldn't be too big a leap to come to an understanding, that phasing out cabal from all avenues does a good service to the community.

If anyone does indeed have this view, please be assured that it is far from universal. Cabal is essential for many Haskell workflows. I and other practitioners use Stack for some projects and Cabal for others because both tools have their strengths, weaknesses, and mutually unique capabilities. The view that Cabal is stagnant is very outdated, most notably with respect to the overall pace and vigor of the Cabal issue tracker, and the excitement around the `cabal new-build` Nix-style commands. -1. The topmost method will target beginners of the language and

should be Stack even if HP comes with Stack.

Many beginners will be picking up a copy of a book, or working through an established curriculum. While the cutting edge of published guides and course curricula may have converted to Stack, there is a vast quantity of material for beginners that assumes you can type `ghci` and `cabal install` at the prompt. Which particular materials to recommend to a beginner is a matter of reasonable debate, but the best support we can give to those beginners as stewards of the infrastructure is to highlight an option that allows beginners to quickly succeed with the option of their choice. should be Stack even if HP comes with Stack. What is the reasoning here? How does having other tools bundled take away from the new user experience? On Sun, Aug 28, 2016 at 3:17 PM, Ganesh Sittampalam wrote:

+1 - that seems like the simplest way of preserving the existing intention.

On 27/08/2016 06:05, Adam Foltzer wrote:

...

+1

Since the HP Minimal fits such a similar niche, perhaps we could adapt the existing minimal installer language in-place to point to HP Minimal, rather than removing it. Then we could modify the existing HP section in-place to clarify that it refers to HP Full.

On Fri, Aug 26, 2016 at 9:50 PM, Jason Dagit mailto:dagitj@gmail.com> wrote:

Hello all,

I just realized that the Minimal installer listed first on the Downloads page (https://www.haskell.org/downloads https://www.haskell.org/downloads) is deprecated and "dead". This creates an unfortunate situation where our top suggested way to get haskell immediately tells the user it's dead.

I think that we should remove mention of the minimal installer ASAP on the grounds that the HP now comes in minimal and full variants.

Furthermore, I would like to make the recommendation that we list the HP above other methods as even the minimal HP installer ships with stack (at least on windows it does).

Between the two changes, I think the first one is crucial and the second one is merely reasonable.

Thanks, Jason

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On Fri, Aug 26, 2016 at 10:05:49PM -0700, Adam Foltzer wrote:

Since the HP Minimal fits such a similar niche, perhaps we could adapt the existing minimal installer language in-place to point to HP Minimal, rather than removing it. Then we could modify the existing HP section in-place to clarify that it refers to HP Full.

As having "deprecated" link in the download page is a no-no and warrants a quick fix. Adam Foltzer's proposal is the most simple to implement (well, I should say "has the least friction in a hotly debated topic"), hence most reasonable to me.

As a beginner, I found Stack far and away the better solution. HP polluted my system, causing me problems it took me literally years to track down, even after I thought I deleted it. Even if it were to improve, I will never trust it again, and I think my sentiment is widespread. It's already confusing to have multiple download options and multiple webpages. At the moment, nothing beats "brew install haskell-stack" (for me, but not much more complicated to follow the instructions on the excellent Stack hp), so I don't see why you wouldn't just make that the one and only recommended installation method. Everyone is being steered away from HP, anyway, and I sort of wonder how many people who read this list are still using it themselves and not Stack? On Mon, Aug 29, 2016 at 11:00 AM Adam Foltzer wrote:

What about the backpack-related work? Isn't cabal-install where the

...

user-facing CLI side of this work is most likely to be landed?

Backpack is also very exciting, indeed!

That being said, assuming the minimal installer variant get dropped from

...

downloads, where is downloads/linux going to move to, and how will it be discoverable in future?

This a really important point.

Does anyone know if the distributions listed on the HP Linux page have packaged the minimal platform? As it is right now, it appears that Windows and Mac send you to a page where you can choose either, but Linux only provides instructions for Full except under the Generic option.

If distros start to package HP Minimal, I would propose replacing the Fedora and Arch instructions on downloads/linux with that, but we'll want to keep the Ubuntu instructions around due to your excellent PPA. I'm not sure how that should look concretely, though, given that it would essentially become a fourth option if HP Minimal replaces the current minimal installer section.

On Mon, Aug 29, 2016 at 4:35 AM, Francesco Ariis wrote:

...

...

Since the HP Minimal fits such a similar niche, perhaps we could adapt

On Fri, Aug 26, 2016 at 10:05:49PM -0700, Adam Foltzer wrote: the

...

existing minimal installer language in-place to point to HP Minimal, rather than removing it. Then we could modify the existing HP section in-place to clarify that it refers to HP Full.

As having "deprecated" link in the download page is a no-no and warrants a quick fix.

Adam Foltzer's proposal is the most simple to implement (well, I should say "has the least friction in a hotly debated topic"), hence most reasonable to me.

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On August 28, 2016 at 2:03:18 PM, Michael Carpenter (oldmanmike.dev@gmail.com) wrote:

Also, why would it be advisable to promote HP over Stack?

The minimal HP, which is proposed to move to the top is simply an installer that includes ghc, and core tools such as alex, happy, cabal and stack. That’s it. It is nicer because, as we’ve discussed previously, many users expect the full suite of command-line tools to be available directly to them (i.e. they can just type ‘ghci’ and it works) and many many tutorials and books are written assuming this. Furthermore, it enables both stack and cabal workflows. As far as I know, it has no real downsides and I don’t understand the opposition to it outside of, perhaps, a belief that nobody should ever be provided with the cabal binary. As such, replacing the existing minimal installersm (which are not getting updated) with the HP-minimal installers (which serve the same purpose, and are getting updated) seems like the most obvious and striaghtforward course of action to me.

1) As far as I can tell, this discussion is meaningless without the feedback of newcomers to Haskell who are attempting to set up their environment on Windows. Linux and Mac users don't need minghc and have a package manager anyways to install whatever they want. Experienced users aren't the priority of the Download page as we already know which download we actually want and where it is, even if its less direct than the beginners option.

I’m not sure how true this is — linux users at times want a newer binary than is provided by their package manager. Also, many mac users don’t use package managers.

2) This really just boils down to the political gridlock between HP and Stack. Unless the actual parties involved in that gridlock can hammer out an actual decision directly, why have an obscure vote on an obscure mailing list? Such an act comes off as clandestine.

As per: https://wiki.haskell.org/Haskell.org_committee the list serves as a forum for the committee, which is the historical body in charge of haskell.org and its subdomains, to discuss actions under its purview with a broader group of interested people. There is no polling mechanism as such — the committee is empowered to act, but this forum was created as a way to ensure that people had a single unified venue to discuss publically such actions. It was announced both to haskell-cafe as well as the reddit at the time of its creation. We can’t expect committee members to follow discussions all over reddit/twitter/etc nor can we expect such discussions to archive well and uniformly so we have a future record. —Gershom

The choice boils down to whether you want stack to manage your GHC installation or not. I personally find it distasteful. This has been the biggest blocker for me using stack, it wants to control more of my workflow than I want to give it, leading to an overlap of responsibilities. (I do use stack, but only with external GHC installations, and I often get into a mess when it tries to download another GHC) Having said that, is it better for new users to delegate the GHC installation to stack? I don't know. It certainly has the downside that you can't just type "ghci" and get a prompt. The world seems simpler when it consists of - GHC installations - build tools that use your GHC installations and manage local package building But when my build tool manages my GHC installations, there's now a layer of abstraction in the way of GHC and I can't figure out how to interact directly with GHC any more. Also I can't use cabal (which I often do). So, I'd argue for HP minimal to be the default download option. By all means recommend stack as the default build tool - I'm sure it's less problematic for most people to get Stackage by default, and cabal isn't set up to use Stackage out of the box. Can't we get rid of HP Full? I don't see a use for that any more. Cheers Simon On 29 August 2016 at 16:29, Nicolas Wu wrote:

Hello,

I think having multiple options is confusing to beginners, and so I'd like to see a single download option on the download page.

For me it's important that we have a way for beginners to use tools like ghc and ghci on the command line directly in order to run small throw-away programs.

The decision about how to manage projects and their dependencies should be open and isn't for beginners, whether that be using stack or cabal: both have their merits, and I don't want to push one over the other. The default installation should provide both of these as well as other tools core to building ghc.

As such, I'm in favour of having the HP as the only option.

Nick

On Sat, Aug 27, 2016 at 5:50 AM Jason Dagit wrote:

...

Hello all,

I just realized that the Minimal installer listed first on the Downloads page (https://www.haskell.org/downloads) is deprecated and "dead". This creates an unfortunate situation where our top suggested way to get haskell immediately tells the user it's dead.

I think that we should remove mention of the minimal installer ASAP on the grounds that the HP now comes in minimal and full variants.

Furthermore, I would like to make the recommendation that we list the HP above other methods as even the minimal HP installer ships with stack (at least on windows it does).

Between the two changes, I think the first one is crucial and the second one is merely reasonable.

Thanks, Jason

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alias ghci="stack ghci" ? On Tue, Aug 30, 2016 at 9:17 AM Gershom B wrote:

On August 30, 2016 at 6:23:36 AM, Simon Marlow (marlowsd@gmail.com) wrote:

...

...

Can't we get rid of HP Full? I don't see a use for that any more.

I think it can be removed from a prominent spot in the downloads page. There are a variety of cases where people still seem to prefer it for some settings (especially those which may have limited ongoing network access), despite being warned that it is not typically recommended, so I think it makes sense to continue to provide it in some fashon, albeit less prominent, for the time being.

If I can scrape the time together today I’ll try to pull together some text for the whole downloads page to propose here for feedback, trying to take this discussion into account.

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

And... before I had the chance to pull something together, someone else jumped in and made this very nice proposal on the website tracker: https://github.com/haskell-infra/hl/issues/176 That seems like a good basis for discussion :-) (Note that this presupposes is to renaming minimal to the Haskell Toolchain, as per the discussion at https://github.com/haskell/haskell-platform/issues/250) --Gershom On Tue, Aug 30, 2016 at 9:17 AM, Gershom B wrote:

On August 30, 2016 at 6:23:36 AM, Simon Marlow (marlowsd@gmail.com) wrote:

...

...

Can't we get rid of HP Full? I don't see a use for that any more.

I think it can be removed from a prominent spot in the downloads page. There are a variety of cases where people still seem to prefer it for some settings (especially those which may have limited ongoing network access), despite being warned that it is not typically recommended, so I think it makes sense to continue to provide it in some fashon, albeit less prominent, for the time being.

If I can scrape the time together today I’ll try to pull together some text for the whole downloads page to propose here for feedback, trying to take this discussion into account.

—Gershom

Stack ensures that the Haskell environment stays as specified. I find it very useful that GHC is included in this spec as we don't necessarily (want to) control the external installations. For example, when GHC 8.0 has been pushed in the official repos of Arch Linux, stack just (re)installed the old one transparently and I didn't had to deal with it in my projects, nor rollback the Arch Linux package. If new users try to use Haskell on such distros, they would better use stack with the latest LTS (implying GHC 7.10.3) than use GHC 8.0 from the official repo and deal with broken dependencies during the transition period. Moreover it is still possible to use "ghci" and "ghc" for small scripts and interactive sessions. I agree that stack should be the recommended build tool, hence: 1) For the download page, I would say the "minimal install" (or "net install") is stack and should be on top. 2) On Linux distros where the HP is just a meta-package, as long as it brings the latest haskell-stack package, it shouldn't do no harm (but by default stack may not even use the provided GHC, depending on the current LTS and on the GHC version in the repo). 3) For bindist HPs, if the GHC version doesn't match the one used by stack, I don't see the point of including stack in the HP (or using the HP at all) because the first thing stack will do is to download another GHC. Maybe it would be possible to provide a default stack.yaml in the HP that would force stack to use a resolver associated with the provided GHC and libraries, in which case it would make more sense. Maybe bindist HPs could be automatically generated to match Stackage's LTS releases? A "HP Full" release could provide more packages from the LTS. 4) A "get-started" example using stack should be added on haskell.org Cheers, Sylvain On 30/08/2016 12:23, Simon Marlow wrote:

The choice boils down to whether you want stack to manage your GHC installation or not.

I personally find it distasteful. This has been the biggest blocker for me using stack, it wants to control more of my workflow than I want to give it, leading to an overlap of responsibilities. (I do use stack, but only with external GHC installations, and I often get into a mess when it tries to download another GHC)

Having said that, is it better for new users to delegate the GHC installation to stack? I don't know. It certainly has the downside that you can't just type "ghci" and get a prompt.

The world seems simpler when it consists of - GHC installations - build tools that use your GHC installations and manage local package building

But when my build tool manages my GHC installations, there's now a layer of abstraction in the way of GHC and I can't figure out how to interact directly with GHC any more. Also I can't use cabal (which I often do).

So, I'd argue for HP minimal to be the default download option. By all means recommend stack as the default build tool - I'm sure it's less problematic for most people to get Stackage by default, and cabal isn't set up to use Stackage out of the box.

Can't we get rid of HP Full? I don't see a use for that any more.

Cheers Simon

On 29 August 2016 at 16:29, Nicolas Wu mailto:nicolas.wu@gmail.com> wrote:

Hello,

I think having multiple options is confusing to beginners, and so I'd like to see a single download option on the download page.

For me it's important that we have a way for beginners to use tools like ghc and ghci on the command line directly in order to run small throw-away programs.

The decision about how to manage projects and their dependencies should be open and isn't for beginners, whether that be using stack or cabal: both have their merits, and I don't want to push one over the other. The default installation should provide both of these as well as other tools core to building ghc.

As such, I'm in favour of having the HP as the only option.

Nick

On Sat, Aug 27, 2016 at 5:50 AM Jason Dagit mailto:dagitj@gmail.com> wrote:

Hello all,

I just realized that the Minimal installer listed first on the Downloads page (https://www.haskell.org/downloads https://www.haskell.org/downloads) is deprecated and "dead". This creates an unfortunate situation where our top suggested way to get haskell immediately tells the user it's dead.

I think that we should remove mention of the minimal installer ASAP on the grounds that the HP now comes in minimal and full variants.

Furthermore, I would like to make the recommendation that we list the HP above other methods as even the minimal HP installer ships with stack (at least on windows it does).

Between the two changes, I think the first one is crucial and the second one is merely reasonable.

Thanks, Jason

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Hi Paolo, On Tue, Aug 30, 2016 at 1:53 PM Paolo Giarrusso wrote:

...

The decision about how to manage projects and their dependencies should be open and isn't for beginners, whether that be using stack or cabal: both have their merits, and I don't want to push one over the other.

I'm honestly confused what you're arguing. You say this decision isn't for beginners, yet you propose offering the HP. So how should a beginner install a package without first deciding whether to use cabal-install or stack? Or can a beginner meaningfully be expected to learn using both alternatives?

Sorry for not being clear, my bad. Hopefully I can clarify and elaborate a bit more. I think a beginner doesn't usually make the choice of how to use GHC/stack/cabal by themselves; they are usually being instructed by someone (or a resource) that has decided that for them. On that front I don't think there's a singular best way to approach this; there's diversity in the way people approach teaching and that's fine and healthy, there's also diversity in the way people learn and the goals they have with the language and that's fine and healthy too. We should be supporting people who want to learn the language as well as people who want to contribute to teaching. We should respect diversity in those roles; if someone wants their students to use only stack then by all means they can do so, that shouldn't stop others from using ghc or ghci directly. For instance, if a beginner is just trying to run small examples they see on a blog, then maybe all they need is a call to ghci. If they're learning about making a simple binary they might want ghc. If they want to have a whole managed project, perhaps they're after either stack or cabal. The point is that they're usually guided by something, and those guides do differ on what they prefer and recommend. The default download should easily support these different modes of learning and teaching.

Also, do both tools have their merits *for beginners*? We're talking of cabal as-is, not of the ongoing work on new-build.

I'm talking about having a default that bundles tools like ghc, cabal, and stack, since these are the main tools our community has for compiling and executing Haskell code. I don't want to force people into one of these--whether that be students or educators. In all cases the default download recommendation should support all of these since they are the mainstream tools we use. To avoid confusion I think there should be only one recommended option on the main download page (and here the HP minimal seems to satisfy this, and stack seems to preclude this). The download page should also have a link to other resources (such as the HP Full, stack only, and other distributions like Haskell for Mac) on another page. Since there seems to be confusion about how the committee comes to a consensus I should note that at this point I'm only speaking for myself here. This is just my recommendation, and I'm open and willing to listen to other views before considering what I think is best. I am not usually overtly vocal in these discussions, but I do read what is said and form my own opinions. Best wishes, Nick

Hello Michael, On Thu, Sep 1, 2016 at 6:37 AM Michael Snoyman wrote:

On Thu, Sep 1, 2016 at 12:41 AM, Nicolas Wu wrote:

...

I think a beginner doesn't usually make the choice of how to use GHC/stack/cabal by themselves; they are usually being instructed by someone (or a resource) that has decided that for them.

I disagree, and that's where a lot of this debate comes from. Let me give an example from another language. Suppose you know nothing about Rust, and decide you want to learn Rust because you see a blog post talking about how awesome Rust is (with no specific link to "get started here," which is frequently the case). You'd probably go to Google and search "Rust programming language," and show up on their homepage. They have two links that stand out (to me at least):

* A big "Download" button, which provides the compiler and build tool (AFAICT it does not include non-standard libraries, so pretty equivalent to HP Minimal) * A "Show me" link taking you straight to a tutorial, which covers both command line invocation for the compiler _and_ the build tool

This is the documentation issue I've raised a few times: a new user coming from nowhere has no way of really getting started with Haskell after downloading the platform. _Some_ kind of "go here next" is necessary if we want to improve the new Haskeller bounce rate (which is all I'm concerned with). By that metric, a solid "how to get far in Haskell with just standard libraries and the ghc executable" would work, as would a tutorial on "writing applications with HP and cabal-install."

If I've understood you correctly, I agree on this point: we should be providing a single download that contains something equivalent to the HP Minimal. That's what I'm suggesting. I also agree that pointing to a tutorial that outlines how to actually use the tools is useful. However, based on my experience working with new users (both through Yesod,

general Haskell work, and at my day job), I believe that Stack covers the job best, since:

1. The Haskell standard libraries are very bare bones, so most users will quickly want an additional library, even just for experimenting 2. I still see users complaining about dependency solving problems with cabal-install, and new users will likely be turned off very quickly by that 3. Stack+curated package sets has produced much lower friction in these regards 4. Stack already has a quick start guide ( https://docs.haskellstack.org/en/stable/README/#quick-start-guide), in-depth guide (https://docs.haskellstack.org/en/stable/GUIDE/), and has usage covered by books and tutorials. I don't believe a holistic workflow is included in the HP or the Cabal websites for cabal-install workflow (though if I'm mistaken, please point it out, that would be an interesting comparison).

This is where I think you and I have different use cases, and where I'm advocating diversity that will allow us both to teach as we like. In my experience as a university lecturer that teaches students learning Haskell in the first term of their first year, I have a different approach that has also seen success. My initial tutorials require students to invoke ghc and ghci to familiarise themselves with the concepts of compilers and interpreters. They do so on small self-contained exercises. I'm at the same time trying to get them used to the command line, since for many this will be their first experience of any development at all. They need a simple workflow at this point since they are already dealing with so many different issues. Later exercises that involve a very small project use cabal, but for the most part this is redundant: our university machines are pre-configured with all the packages I know they'll need for the tasks they need. I try to avoid having them deal with dependency issues at all, since that's an area that's tangential to learning about functional programming and they have so much to learn and understand at this point. Let me stress that I'm not trying to change the way you teach the newcomers you encounter, I'm just saying that I approach this differently (I suspect that it's because the beginners you're describing are newcomers to Haskell who already have some programming experience). When my students hit the downloads page to install Haskell on their own machines, I want them to find at least a minimal toolchain that contains a compiler and an interpreter. PS: The hypothetical example of "reads a great Rust blog post and gets

interested" is _exactly_ what I'm hoping to cause to happen in the Haskell community. I want to encourage lots of people to write great content on why Haskell is an amazing language that will solve so many real world problems. My big concern with the direction of haskell.org is that these new users will end up hitting a brick wall very quickly with the content on the site right now.

I want to build up a good community too, and I am grateful the efforts that have been put into technologies like stack and cabal. I want to explicitly acknowledge and appreciate all the hard work that you and other people have been putting into improving our infrastructure: what we have is a very valuable resource. I also think the site needs improving, so let's work to fix that. I'm obviously aware that you have been unhappy with the decisions the committee has made on this issue, and I'm sorry you've been upset. I can only assure you that you have been listened to in the past and that we will continue to listen. I think our goal is to foster a community that embraces our common interests and accepts diversity. Best wishes, Nick

...

...

...

...

"MS" == Michael Snoyman writes:

MS> Thank you, I'm really glad to be having this technical level of MS> conversation. If we actually talk out the points and make clear what MS> everyone's goals are, I don't think it's unreasonable at all to come up MS> with a solution that everyone is happy with. Having more involvement from MS> the rest of the committee on this discussion is great. I'm very glad to hear you say this Michael. Creating a positive Haskell experience for others is my only reason to want to be involved on this committee. If we can all work together to achieve a better state of affairs (and I think we universally agree things need improving), this would cause me great joy. I don't have any particular ideas on the download page right now, apart from what's been said already, but when I do, I'll chime in. -- John Wiegley GPG fingerprint = 4710 CF98 AF9B 327B B80F http://newartisans.com 60E1 46C4 BD1A 7AC1 4BA2

This sounds awesome, I'm totally behind it. Thank you Gershom! On Thu, Sep 1, 2016, 10:09 AM Gershom B wrote:

I think this is a very good point being made. We should disengangle the installer question from the “getting started” question. Someone on reddit even proposed having two seperate pages entirely.

A getting started page that promoted a stack centric workflow for beginners as a good “default path” would be reasonable in my eyes, and certainly worth discussing. Certainly if it let us lay the downloads page to rest with a single option for a minimal installer (with perhaps slightly different branding as discussed on a ticket I linked earlier — “Haskell Toolchain” or the like) that provided ghc, stack and cabal all, then I think that would be a very good way to go.

That way Nicolas and others who wanted to direct people to the downloads page, and then wanted to teach them with one sort of approach would be able to do so, people who wanted to direct people to the downloads page, and teach them with a stack-based approach would be able to do so, and people coming to the site directly could immediately find a “getting started page” with a single approach that got them up and running quickly, and that approach could well be stack-oriented if that’s what people think gives the best experience for that particular use case.

(Again, I give the caveat I’m speaking just for myself here, and thinking this through as an idea I’d like to hear others’ thoughts on).

—gershom

...

Hi Paolo,

On Tue, Aug 30, 2016 at 1:53 PM Paolo Giarrusso wrote:

...

...

The decision about how to manage projects and their dependencies should be open and isn't for beginners, whether that be using stack or cabal: both have their merits, and I don't want to push one over the other.

I'm honestly confused what you're arguing. You say this decision isn't for beginners, yet you propose offering the HP. So how should a beginner install a package without first deciding whether to use cabal-install or stack? Or can a beginner meaningfully be expected to learn using both alternatives?

Sorry for not being clear, my bad. Hopefully I can clarify and elaborate a bit more.

I think a beginner doesn't usually make the choice of how to use GHC/stack/cabal by themselves; they are usually being instructed by someone (or a resource) that has decided that for them. On that front I don't

...

there's a singular best way to approach this; there's diversity in the way people approach teaching and that's fine and healthy, there's also diversity in the way people learn and the goals they have with the language and that's fine and healthy too. We should be supporting people who want to learn the language as well as people who want to contribute to teaching. We should respect diversity in those roles; if someone wants their students to use only stack then by all means they can do so, that shouldn't stop others from using ghc or ghci directly.

For instance, if a beginner is just trying to run small examples they see on a blog, then maybe all they need is a call to ghci. If they're learning about making a simple binary they might want ghc. If they want to have a whole managed project, perhaps they're after either stack or cabal. The point is that they're usually guided by something, and those guides do differ on what they prefer and recommend. The default download should easily support these different modes of learning and teaching.

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Also, do both tools have their merits *for beginners*? We're talking of cabal as-is, not of the ongoing work on new-build.

I'm talking about having a default that bundles tools like ghc, cabal, and stack, since these are the main tools our community has for compiling and executing Haskell code. I don't want to force people into one of these--whether that be students or educators. In all cases the default download recommendation should support all of these since they are the mainstream tools we use. To avoid confusion I think there should be only one recommended option on the main download page (and here the HP minimal seems to satisfy this, and stack seems to preclude this). The download

On August 31, 2016 at 5:48:41 PM, Nicolas Wu (nicolas.wu@gmail.com) wrote: think page

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should also have a link to other resources (such as the HP Full, stack only, and other distributions like Haskell for Mac) on another page.

Since there seems to be confusion about how the committee comes to a consensus I should note that at this point I'm only speaking for myself here. This is just my recommendation, and I'm open and willing to listen to other views before considering what I think is best. I am not usually overtly vocal in these discussions, but I do read what is said and form my own opinions.

Best wishes,

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

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I started on Haskell last year and I fall in the category of "discovering it by searching on google" and learning it myself, nobody told me about Haskell and I did not even know about it before. Let me share my perspective on this issue. I can vouch for Haskell being a very high barrier to entry for casually interested and even moderately motivated people. In the long battle most people will quit before the finish line. I assume our goal here is to make Haskell popular, successful and influential. I believe it is already highly successful in the academic community and among a relatively small community of self motivated people who are smart enough to see why it is the right choice. What we need is to make it successful among the bulk of the engineering community who usually don't care what language they use. When I mention Haskell to anyone I know of in my engineering circle, they are usually confident that I meant Pascal. I think Haskell deserves a lot better than that. I would strongly argue that we should not target the Haskell landing or first download page for those who already know Haskell, they won't even need it. It is for those who do not know enough and want to learn more. It is for luring and then trapping people. Specifically I would say that this page should not be targeted for students or mentored learners in general. It should be targeted to self learners. If you are a student, learning Haskell as part of a course you would have an expert mentor to tell you what to do. If you are a mentor you should know enough to not need that page and if you do then you are in the self learner category anyway. If you are a self motivated person you would anyway find what you need. We need the website to lure the mass engineering community of casual users or moderately motivated self learners usually looking for a better way to solve some problem. In the engineering community people have little time. Everybody is busy with their day to day work and nobody has time and motivation to put huge amount of time and effort to learn something that they do not even know whether it will be useful. The way we can lure them is by showing how easily they can solve one of their small day to day problem, using Haskell, without investing a huge amount of time. That means we need a _zero_ learning build tool. Though build tool is not the only hurdle but it is an important first step. In my opinion we should not even talk about build tool user guide for beginners, it should not be required, the tool must be intuitive enough and the help available with it must be really good. Once you graduate to advanced usage it is a different matter altogether. Another point that I want to make is that we should list only _one tool_ on the front page. Multiple choice is an immediate psychological barrier for beginners. When the users have a choice they must decide on one out of many. So either you explain the rationale right there or they will have to search the internet for reviews etc. In any case it requires an effort to choose and has a risk of turning them off. The committee should decide on a single choice after gathering enough information on what is best. They can ask for a shootout from the competing tools if that's needed. In my opinion and from my experience learning Haskell for last one year or so, stack is a pretty good choice at the moment. It fits most of the requirements of a tool which has an out of the box experience. Though it may not be perfect it seems to be generally in the right direction especially for those who want to get started quickly and effortlessly. -harendra On 1 September 2016 at 12:39, Gershom B wrote:

I think this is a very good point being made. We should disengangle the installer question from the “getting started” question. Someone on reddit even proposed having two seperate pages entirely.

A getting started page that promoted a stack centric workflow for beginners as a good “default path” would be reasonable in my eyes, and certainly worth discussing. Certainly if it let us lay the downloads page to rest with a single option for a minimal installer (with perhaps slightly different branding as discussed on a ticket I linked earlier — “Haskell Toolchain” or the like) that provided ghc, stack and cabal all, then I think that would be a very good way to go.

That way Nicolas and others who wanted to direct people to the downloads page, and then wanted to teach them with one sort of approach would be able to do so, people who wanted to direct people to the downloads page, and teach them with a stack-based approach would be able to do so, and people coming to the site directly could immediately find a “getting started page” with a single approach that got them up and running quickly, and that approach could well be stack-oriented if that’s what people think gives the best experience for that particular use case.

(Again, I give the caveat I’m speaking just for myself here, and thinking this through as an idea I’d like to hear others’ thoughts on).

—gershom

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Hi Paolo,

On Tue, Aug 30, 2016 at 1:53 PM Paolo Giarrusso wrote:

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The decision about how to manage projects and their dependencies should be open and isn't for beginners, whether that be using stack or cabal: both have their merits, and I don't want to push one over the other.

I'm honestly confused what you're arguing. You say this decision isn't for beginners, yet you propose offering the HP. So how should a beginner install a package without first deciding whether to use cabal-install or stack? Or can a beginner meaningfully be expected to learn using both alternatives?

Sorry for not being clear, my bad. Hopefully I can clarify and elaborate a bit more.

I think a beginner doesn't usually make the choice of how to use GHC/stack/cabal by themselves; they are usually being instructed by someone (or a resource) that has decided that for them. On that front I don't

...

there's a singular best way to approach this; there's diversity in the way people approach teaching and that's fine and healthy, there's also diversity in the way people learn and the goals they have with the language and that's fine and healthy too. We should be supporting people who want to learn the language as well as people who want to contribute to teaching. We should respect diversity in those roles; if someone wants their students to use only stack then by all means they can do so, that shouldn't stop others from using ghc or ghci directly.

For instance, if a beginner is just trying to run small examples they see on a blog, then maybe all they need is a call to ghci. If they're learning about making a simple binary they might want ghc. If they want to have a whole managed project, perhaps they're after either stack or cabal. The point is that they're usually guided by something, and those guides do differ on what they prefer and recommend. The default download should easily support these different modes of learning and teaching.

...

Also, do both tools have their merits *for beginners*? We're talking of cabal as-is, not of the ongoing work on new-build.

I'm talking about having a default that bundles tools like ghc, cabal, and stack, since these are the main tools our community has for compiling and executing Haskell code. I don't want to force people into one of these--whether that be students or educators. In all cases the default download recommendation should support all of these since they are the mainstream tools we use. To avoid confusion I think there should be only one recommended option on the main download page (and here the HP minimal seems to satisfy this, and stack seems to preclude this). The download

On August 31, 2016 at 5:48:41 PM, Nicolas Wu (nicolas.wu@gmail.com) wrote: think page

...

should also have a link to other resources (such as the HP Full, stack only, and other distributions like Haskell for Mac) on another page.

Since there seems to be confusion about how the committee comes to a consensus I should note that at this point I'm only speaking for myself here. This is just my recommendation, and I'm open and willing to listen to other views before considering what I think is best. I am not usually overtly vocal in these discussions, but I do read what is said and form my own opinions.

Best wishes,

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

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

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"GB" == Gershom B writes:

GB> I think this is a very good point being made. We should disengangle the GB> installer question from the “getting started” question.  Someone on reddit GB> even proposed having two seperate pages entirely. GB> (Again, I give the caveat I’m speaking just for myself here, and thinking GB> this through as an idea I’d like to hear others’ thoughts on). Yes, I also think this is a great idea! +1 -- John Wiegley GPG fingerprint = 4710 CF98 AF9B 327B B80F http://newartisans.com 60E1 46C4 BD1A 7AC1 4BA2

As an update, the "getting started" section has not been worked on sufficiently as of yet. However, we have an upcoming platform and ghc release again, and as the os x and windows minimal installers remain out-of-date (and increasingly broken) I've taken the "minimal" (pardon the pun) step of trying to leave nearly everything as is but pointing the downloads there to minimal "via the platform" rather than via the outdated methods. I know this is not where we hoped to be yet, but its a small stopgap step that i hope people can be ok with while other things get sorted out. Thanks everyone for their patience and understanding. Best, Gershom On Thu, Sep 1, 2016 at 5:20 AM, Friedrich Wiemer wrote:

+1 from me, too.

On 01.09.2016 09:41, John Wiegley wrote:

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> "GB" == Gershom B writes:

GB> I think this is a very good point being made. We should disengangle the GB> installer question from the “getting started” question. Someone on reddit GB> even proposed having two seperate pages entirely.

GB> (Again, I give the caveat I’m speaking just for myself here, and thinking GB> this through as an idea I’d like to hear others’ thoughts on).

Yes, I also think this is a great idea! +1

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