[Haskell-cafe] Confusions about the Haskell Platform (for Mac)

[Gregory Collins]

Malcolm Wallace <malcolm.wallace at cs.york.ac.uk> writes:

>>>    The platform installer is supposed to erase previous platform
>>>    editions before it installs itself.
>
> I would consider that a serious bug.

"Lacking a feature I would consider essential" /= "a bug" in my opinion,
especially when the desirability of the feature is in question. I have
enough legitimate bugs to deal with as it stands.


> The Haskell Platform is not like a standard user application, where it
> would be reasonable to have only one version installed at a time.  If
> you are a software developer, it is frequently essential to have
> several different versions of the development environment (compiler +
> libraries) installed simultaneously, so that you can adequately
> support users who have different versions of your own software.

We'll have to disagree here; I'd consider this a "power user" feature.
After all, the platform libs can be acquired by other means than the
turnkey binary installer. The OSX package system is so insane that I can
barely get the thing working to begin with, even after making a bunch of
simplifying assumptions (like "we don't need to support multiple
platform installations").

That said, I'm not at all opposed to having this feature, if you can
explain to me (or even better, provide code for) a reasonable scheme for
doing it that isn't going to make this project even more brittle than it
already is.

G
-- 
Gregory Collins <greg at gregorycollins.net>