distro packages vs. install instructions

[Regis Saint-Paul]

Hi, 

This is a general question relative to the comments in ticket #56
http://trac.haskell.org/haskell-platform/ticket/56

The ticket seems about two issues. On the one hand, the fact configure is
not testing for editline, which is an actual bug. But the ticket also hints
at whether the generic linux tarball should provide instructions regarding
which distro packages correspond to the required C libraries. Another ticket
(#1) is about providing the list of C libraries, but does not mention the
mapping of this list to distro packages either. 

A comment in ticket #56 (by Don) mentions that "Solving that problem is for
distro packages. Please ask your distro maintainer why Haskell isn't
supported on the distro". 

My question is why should it be so? Wouldn't it be simpler to describe
installation by distro in the INSTALL file of a single generic linux tarball
rather than building separately packaging for every single distro? 

The rational is that it takes one line of documentation (a big apt-get) to
make the system ready for ghc and platform installation., while it took me
one full day to figure out the name of all the required packages from the
name of c libraries (obviously, I'm not a linux guru, I guess it would take
much less to anyone more experienced, but still...). 

Please forgive me if providing this distro-specific installation instruction
in some INSTALL file was already planed, I might have simply misunderstood.
If it is not planed, then this mail is for asking why. 

Cheers,
Regis


PS. is anyone currently maintaining Debian packages? I'm asking because
currently, the latest packaged ghc is stuck at 6.8.2.