[Haskell-cafe] install-dirs on Mac OS X

[Mark Lentczner]

On Dec 22, 2009, at 12:35 PM, Duncan Coutts wrote:
> One thing I think I've seen said before however is that things in /Library and ~/Library are supposed to be app bundles or frameworks or some other special OSX packaging thing, rather than traditional Unix-style installations.

Nope - not true. There are all sorts of things under the Library directories. Again, note the list of other languages that store things under /Library. In those cases, those systems are storing installed packages in just the normal way they would on Linux or other unix systems.


On Dec 22, 2009, at 11:49 AM, Tom Tobin wrote:
> It usually drives me crazy when my more "Unix-y" tools stick stuff in my ~/Library/ directory; for instance, I had to actively fight with my copy of Aquamacs Emacs in order to get everything running from ~/.emacs.d/ rather than ~/Library/Preferences/Aquamacs Emacs/.

I don't know the details, but that sounds inappropriate. If there is no graphic UI for such settings, then ~/Library/Preferences is the wrong place. Apple guidelines[*] are that users should generally not have to poke into ~/Library for normal tasks (such as editing their preferences).

As for Haskell, I would suggest that ~/.cabal/config continue to be the location of the user configuration file. Only the installed packages themselves, if installed "--user", would go into ~/Library - since these are files users don't edit or alter once installed.

Of course, you'd still be free to easily reconfigure the location back to under ~/.cabal if you like, since those entries would still be in config for your editing, and ghc-pkg doesn't, thankfully, actually care where things are, once told.


On Dec 22, 2009, at 2:49 AM, Heinrich Apfelmus wrote:
> +1


Excellent. Since there seems to be somewhat an interest in working this out, I've set up a wiki page:

http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Mac_OS_X_Common_Installation_Paths

	- Mark (mtnviewmark)

[*] The Apple guidelines for the /Library and ~/Library files are here: http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/documentation/MacOSX/Conceptual/BPFileSystem/Articles/LibraryDirectory.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/20002282-BAJHCHJI

Mark Lentczner
http://www.ozonehouse.com/mark/
mark at glyphic.com