[Haskell-cafe] Hackage on Linux

[Andrew Coppin]

Browsing around Hackage, I notice that a seemingly random subset of 
packages are available for something called "arch linux". Presumably 
some sort of automatic conversion system is involved, but does anyone 
know why only certain packages appear?

I've noticed that both Debian and OpenSUSE have a very tiny selection of 
binary Haskell packages too. I'm guessing that these packages are also 
auto-generated, but presumably selected by hand. (I also don't recall 
seeing them listed on Hackage.) Anybody know about that?

In general, is there an advantage to having native packages for Haskell 
things? I guess it means you can have binary packages, so you don't need 
to build from source. And for executables, it means the native package 
manager can track all the dependencies and install them all for you, 
potentially without needing a Haskell build environment at all. Is that 
it, or have I missed something?