[Haskell-beginners] Installing packages in Ubuntu

[Glurk]

Hi,

I'm a beginner to both Cabal and Linux.
I'm a bit confused as to whether I need to be using Cabal when installng
packages.

I'm running Ubuntu 9.10, and from the Synaptic Package Manager, I can select
various Haskell packages to install - will this install the package correctly,
or is there something I need to do in Cabal as well ?

Thanks ! :)

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[Magnus Therning]

On Sat, Nov 7, 2009 at 10:05 PM, Glurk <stre...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm a beginner to both Cabal and Linux.
> I'm a bit confused as to whether I need to be using Cabal when installng
> packages.
>
> I'm running Ubuntu 9.10, and from the Synaptic Package Manager, I can select
> various Haskell packages to install - will this install the package correctly,
> or is there something I need to do in Cabal as well ?
>
> Thanks ! :)

IMNSHO, cabal (the tool) is primarily for systems with broken, or
non-existing package managers (read Windows). For other systems,
including Ubuntu, people should use the native packaging system as far
as possible, only reverting to cabal when that fails (for whatever
reason).

So, in short, use Synaptic until you come to a situation where you
need something that isn't packaged for Ubuntu yet. Even then I'd
suggest you first check for a source package in Debian. Only if
everything else fails should you reach for cabal.

/M

--
Magnus Therning (OpenPGP: 0xAB4DFBA4)
magnus＠therning．org Jabber: magnus＠therning．org
http://therning.org/magnus identi.ca|twitter: magthe

[Tom Tobin]

On Sat, Nov 7, 2009 at 4:50 PM, Magnus Therning <mag...@therning.org> wrote:
> IMNSHO, cabal (the tool) is primarily for systems with broken, or
> non-existing package managers (read Windows).  For other systems,
> including Ubuntu, people should use the native packaging system as far
> as possible, only reverting to cabal when that fails (for whatever
> reason).

I strongly disagree with this sentiment. OS package managers tend to
lag behind in releases, assuming they have your package at all; this
problem is severely compounded when you're dealing with a lesser-used
language like Haskell. I always use cabal (which, IMHO, is a much
better tool than similar tools for other languages, e.g., Python's
easy_install), and believe OS package manager use should be
discouraged for Haskell. (I'll grant that cabal needs an "uninstall"
command, as well as a working "upgrade all".)

[Nathan M. Holden]

I can't say that you NEED to be using Cabal. I have it, and I'm also an Ubuntu
newbie. You can download the bootstrap installer, you'll need to install (via
runghc Setup configure, runghc Setup build, runghc Install) the most recent
HTML package, and parsec 2.x to get it to run. Then just add an alias (or, I
did) so you don't have to write a super-long command to run Cabal.

Running Kubuntu 9.10

On Sunday 08 November 2009 08:28:24 am beginner...@haskell.org wrote:
> Message: 6
> Date: Sat, 7 Nov 2009 22:05:34 +0000 (UTC)
> From: Glurk <stre...@hotmail.com>
> Subject: [Haskell-beginners] Installing packages in Ubuntu
> To: begi...@haskell.org
> Message-ID: <loom.2009110...@post.gmane.org>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

>
> Hi,
>
> I'm a beginner to both Cabal and Linux.
> I'm a bit confused as to whether I need to be using Cabal when installng
> packages.
>
> I'm running Ubuntu 9.10, and from the Synaptic Package Manager, I can
> select various Haskell packages to install - will this install the package
> correctly, or is there something I need to do in Cabal as well ?
>
> Thanks ! :)

[Maurí­cio CA]

> I'm a beginner to both Cabal and Linux.
> I'm a bit confused as to whether I need to be using Cabal when installng
> packages.

There's no real confront between then, as cabal will default to
install its packages in your home directory. Follow this rule in
Ubuntu: install what's available from Ubuntu repositories (using
Synaptic) and, whenever you want, need or feel like doing it,
install from cabal. If something goes wrong for any reason, just

rm ~/.cabal

and you get back to what you have in a fresh install.

(If you are a begginer in Haskell: also do use cabal system to
package your own programs. This will give you a good understandment
on how the package system work, and let you more confortable to
experiment with advanced language features.)

Best,
Maur�cio