packaging options for Mac OS X

[Duncan Coutts]

On 24 November 2010 05:58, Mark Lentczner <markl at glyphic.com> wrote:
> I've been asked, and am willing to take over maintenance of the Mac OS X installer from George.

Great.

> 3) Unpack the GHC installer package, build and install the Haskell Platform haskell packages into that tree, and then re-create the installer package. This results in a single installed framework on the Mac (which could be called GHC, or GHC-HP, or some such).
>
> 4) Build an independent Haskell Platform framework, containing the haskell packages built and installed. Take apart the GHC installer package, and build a new, single installer package that installs both the H.P. framework and the GHC framework. This give two frameworks installed on the Mac, and the GHC one is the same as what GHC's installer package would install, but gives the user a single installer experience.

I suggest you stick with a single binary installer that includes all
of GHC + other bits of the HP. It is simple and is what people expect.

3) and 4) are not the only options here. Instead of starting from a
GHC OSX package, start from a simple .tar.gz of the install image.
Then feed this + install images of all the other HP packages to make a
single native OSX package.

If you cannot find a simple .tar.gz image of GHC then talk to the GHC
devs. They produce one for Windows (a .zip) and there is no reason we
cannot make one for OSX (or any other unix, it's just the output of
make install DESTDIR=image/). Trying to unpack or merge an existing
GHC OSX package seems like madness (especially given that the OSX
tools for manipulating packages appear to be non-existent or useless).

As for the question of single installer but multiple frameworks, I
have no opinion or expertise on that matter.

Duncan