[Haskell-cafe] Re: Installing Haskell on Windows 7

[Lee Houghton]

On 27/12/2009 17:42, Duncan Coutts wrote:
>> Okay, the same with "--user" succeeds. Yay!
>
> Right, global installs require admin permissions.
>
> Historically Windows users did have admin permissions so the Windows
> folks advised us that global should be the default. Obviously that's not
> such a good default on Windows Vista or Windows 7. I've been agitating
> to switch the default to per-user installations for a while now:
>
> http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/hackage/ticket/465
>
> I've not got much feedback from the Windows Haskell hacker. In the
> development version of cabal-install I'm going to experimentally switch
> the default to per-user installs and see how that goes.

Speaking as a Windows 7-using Haskeller, I'd be very glad if user install were to become the default. (And even on Windows XP, it is still recommended not to write to Program Files during normal usage.) I agree with the assessment in http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/hackage/ticket/465#comment:2 too.

Don't forget http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/hackage/ticket/466. This can also cause failing in the default setup, even with --user installs. Presumably this would be addressed by switching to the same thing cabal does on other platforms, which is to use "$prefix/share" or similar.