Misplacement of installed binaries

[Neil Mitchell]

Hi

This problem just bit me quite severely. Imagine the scenario:

You install haddock using runhaskell method.

You upgrade haddock, and install it using cabal install.

Both binaries get placed in different places, and depending on your
PATH, you either end up running the old one or the new one. The
difference is subtle, and not good! This is highly unusual for Windows
behaviour.

Therefore I ammend my vote to always install as global, if that fails,
give a message to the user suggesting they might try a local install.
Otherwise these issues will crop up more and more. Anyway, typing
"install" kind of gives the impression to a Windows user that admin
access will be required, so I don't think its too bad.

Thanks

Neil



On 6/15/08, Neil Mitchell <ndmitchell at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi
>
>
>  >  > I suspect that most people should be doing global installs, and that
>  >  > local installs should be a secondary option. Not having write access
>  >
>
> > So is that a vote in favour of doing global installs by default on
>  >  windows or not? Does anyone know what happens when you try to do a
>  >  global install on Vista? I only have access to Win2k3 (as non-admin).
>
>
> A vote in favour of global installs if possible. On Vista you will
>  probably get an incredibly annoying alert from the OS, although I
>  think most real developers will turn that feature off in the first 5
>  minutes.
>
>
>  >  So for the case that we do not have write permission for Program Files
>  >  and we do have to do a local install, what directory would you suggest
>  >  we use?
>
>
> No idea.
>
>  I guess there are arguments both ways, so I'd stick with how it is
>  currently. However, the GHC and Hugs installers should probably both
>  add these extra locations to the %PATH% environment variable.
>
>  Thanks
>
>
>  Neil
>