[Haskell-beginners] Linux install walkthrough

Adrian Adshead adrianadshead at yahoo.co.uk
Wed Feb 17 07:22:39 EST 2010


What I am looking for is a HOWTO for installing haskell on linux, specifically aGHC 6.10.4 haskell-platform-2.0.2 on Centos 5.4 using Leksah as the IDE, and developinga wx application for running on linux and windows. If anyone could point me towardssomething like that showing libraries needed and hoops to jump through then that would be great. But if not here's a rant about the problems:-

I read an article recently (from 2006 I think, so rather outdated) which was talking aboutwhy there were more problems with haskell on windows than with haskell on linux andthe conclusion said that it is because more people develop haskell on linux than onwindows.
I thought great, I'd rather use linux anyway so I'll give it a try. What I found was a hugeheadache and not much to help out with any problems.
My linux of choice is centos (I want stability over features) and I use the first CD onlyof the latest 5.4 to install a minimal system, then use yum to put on only what I need.That formula has worked well for many other systems I have set up, so that is whatI want to do again. I do that so all my systems start from the same place and I canscript the necessary install steps to get to a working system for whatever the purpose.
I found the whole need to jump through so many hoops frustrating and rather a wasteof my time. The developers of the libraries are the people who know what you need torun their libraries so a little help from them wouldn't be missed. Comparing my headacheto the installation of the latest GHC 6.12.1 and cabal-install was a breeze mainly becauseof the bootstrap.sh which does the heavy lifting for you. That would be nice in every library.
If each library developer could include something like that which would install necessaryexternal libraries, preferably which could be called as a prerequisite in the Cabal installprocess, then it really would make a huge difference.
So far I am finding haskell to be a wonderful language and am really enjoying learningit, but my experience compared to when I was looking at Erlang is that the benefits ofthe language are diminished by the hassle of the infrastructure around the platform.


      
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