[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.
>
> It is not merely that a feature is lacking.  Removing software from my
> machine without my knowledge or permission is just wrong.  (I was
> bitten by this once before, with a ghc installer for Mac.  It removed
> the previous working ghc, without telling me.  Then I discovered that
> a library I needed could not be compiled by the new version of ghc.
> The old ghc installer then refused to delete the new ghc and revert to
> the old one, because it could not imagine why anyone would want to
> "downgrade".)

I get where you're coming from, however: almost every binary installer
on every platform I've ever used performs a forcible package upgrade
unless the package maintainer takes special pains to do otherwise.

Like I said, I'm not opposed to doing something about this, if something
simple solves it without adding a significant complexity overhead. Is it
enough to do what GHC does? I.e. a
"/Library/Frameworks/HaskellPlatform.framework/Versions" directory with
appropriate symlinks, as well as a bundled, optional uninstaller script
which zaps everything?

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