[Fwd: OSX installer -- first draft]

[David Menendez]

On Wed, Jun 3, 2009 at 4:50 PM, Gregory Collins <greg at gregorycollins.net> wrote:
> David Menendez <dave at zednenem.com> writes:
>
>>> please could you try out Gregory's Haskell Platform package below and
>>> send commentary to the platform list, or file tickets in the platform
>>> trac, that'd be great.
>>> http://trac.haskell.org/haskell-platform/newticket?component=OSX%20installer
>>
>> Is this a universal binary, or Intel-only?
>
> Intel-only, I believe :(.  I have no idea how I'd even begin to build
> universal binaries for this stuff, nor do I have a non-intel machine to
> build it on.
>
> Once I get the installer procedure perfected, perhaps you could
> volunteer to build that version of the package?

I could do it if no faster PPC Mac is available. Compiling GHC on my
laptop takes most of a day.

>> Will there be some integration with the existing distribution schemes
>> for Mac OS X (fink and macports), or are end users expected to use
>> cabal install?
>
> Ultimately packages get registered with GHC via the "ghc-pkg" command,
> so the two should be compatible; I'd expect most users would want to
> switch to cabal though.

Compatibility isn't the issue. Software which relies on GHC to build
(e.g., Darcs) lists ghc as a dependency. Thus, macports (and
presumably fink) will try to install its own GHC rather than use the
one from the binary installer.

Is the plan to prefer binary installations on the Mac for
Haskell-written software?

-- 
Dave Menendez <dave at zednenem.com>
<http://www.eyrie.org/~zednenem/>