#96: Webpage should mention dependencies
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Reporter: Michael Thompson | Owner:
Type: defect | Status: new
Priority: minor | Milestone:
Component: (none-specified) | Keywords:
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I was attempting to explain the installation of Pandoc to some fellow
half-wits and realized that http://hackage.haskell.org/platform/ doesn't
specify any dependencies for the Windows and Mac installers. On OS X, one
for sure needs the XCode tools from the install disk or via
http://developer.apple.com/technology/xcode.html I'm not sure if there
are any for Windows, or if everything has been taken into account in that
case. It seems like common sense that dependencies should be specified
right where one clicks on Platform.exe and Platform.dmg since packaging
systems are either non-existent or are being by-passed in these cases.
I was going to intervene in one of the disputes on haskell-cafe about
''what the Platform should contain'' with the point that everything was
focussed on the needs of 'developers', but figured I was too much of a
half-wit. (Of course, this is an even less appropriate place to exhibit my
half-wittedness, but here goes...) If Hackage is to contain more 'killer
apps' like Pandoc, which is surely the earnest desire of every Haskeller,
a completely different mindset will be necessary as well. For example,
the peculiar licensing of Pandoc was keeping it out of the Platform, quite
reasonably, but for it and future *hackage* applications that use it the
considerations people mentioned were irrelevant. The killer (Hackage)
apps of tomorrow will all need cabal install and the ghc runtime and so
on. Maybe there should be plans for something like Haskell-App-Platform
which would not be for the sake of developers, but simply something that
makes up for the sorry fact that the major end-user OSes *foolishly fail
to include a Haskell compiler*, so that installing Haskelly things was
hitherto a nightmare, while installing things written in everything else
is basically point and click. The far-seeing inventors of the Platform
seem to have failed to notice how far they have already taken us toward
that paradise. One can see from the pandoc-discuss list that most users
aren't Haskellers. For them, the miracle of the Platform is that you can
point and click your way to a machine that has cabal install, which
massively contracts the dependency nightmare so they can use Haskell
devices as black boxes, the way I use Perl and Python devices. The simple
point that the OS X installer makes /.cabal/bin and sticks it onto $PATH
is in fact *immensely* important from this point of view, though it is a
mere convenience from the point of view of developer-types.
yours, Michael Thompson
--
Ticket URL: <http://trac.haskell.org/haskell-platform/ticket/96>
haskell-platform <http://trac.haskell.org/haskell-platform>
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