[Haskell-cafe] ANNOUNCE: Utrecht Haskell Compiler (UHC) -- first release

[Thomas Davie]

On 19 Apr 2009, at 11:10, Duncan Coutts wrote:

> On Sun, 2009-04-19 at 10:02 +0200, Thomas Davie wrote:
>
>>>> It really rather makes "cabal install" rather odd – because it
>>>> doesn't actually install anything you can use without providing  
>>>> extra
>>>> options!
>>>
>>> It should work fine, you'll need to give more details.
>>
>> This has been the result, at least every time I've installed ghc:
>>
>> $ cabal install xyz
>
> So this does a per-user install.
>
>> $ runhaskell Setup.hs configure -- where abc depends on xyz
>
> This does a global install. Global packages cannot depend on user
> packages. You have two choices:
>
> $ cabal configure
>
> because the cabal program does --user installs by default
> or use
>
> $ runhaskell Setup.hs configure --user
>
> which explicitly does a --user install.
>
> The reason for this confusion is because the original runghc Setup
> interface started with global installs and we can't easily change that
> default. On the other hand, per-user installs are much more convenient
> so that's the sensible default for the 'cabal' command line program.

I don't understand what makes user installs more convenient.   
Certainly, my preference would be for global all the time – I expect  
something that says it's going to "install" something to install it  
onto my computer, like any other installation program does.  What is  
it that makes user installs more convenient in this situation?

Bob