On 15 June 2004 16:53, Sven Panne wrote:
Simon Marlow wrote:
This was a conscious decision - making install-location-neutral binary distributions is hard in general, and not always possible. GHC goes to some lengths to support it. Most other packaging systems do *not* support this (eg. neither RPM nor BSD ports do). [...]
I don't know about BSD ports, but RPM definitely supports relocatable packages, see e.g.:
http://www.rpm.org/max-rpm/ch-rpm-reloc.html
The problem is that most .spec writers (including me :-) don't take the trouble to make a package relocatable. I'm quite sure that we could e.g. make all our fptools stuff (ghc, alex, happy, ...) relocatable, but at least for me this has not a high priority. I'd be happy if somebody takes the time, though... :-)
Ok, I should have been clearer: I meant that these package systems do not guarantee to produce location-independent packages. They can do, with some help from the packager, but that isn't a requirement, and the user cannot rely on an arbitrary package being relocatable at install time. We have so far taken the view in Cabal that since it imposes too much of a burden on the packager and author to produce location-independent packages, that we shouldn't support it at all. However, I could possibly be convinced that we should allow it as an option, on a per-package basis, though. Cheers, Simon