Neil Mitchell wrote:
In the improbable case that Haskell compiler has been installed without some basic libraries, I think it would be okay if ghc build would complain that it needs library X or Y. It should say from where these can be downloaded and the installation should be straight forward.
That's not the job of GHC, that's the job of Cabal. And if the libraries to run Cabal are not present, then what happens?
This would be bad. Of course there must be some core libraries that have to be shipped with the compiler. Cabal and anything that cabal needs to run is definitely a must-have. What I am arguing for (and Bulat, if I understand him correctly) is that it's ok if building the _compiler itself_ (or profiler or whatever else (apart from some exceptions like cabal) is shipped with the compiler) needs libraries from outside the core library set. Cheers, Ben