Add shortcut to Hackage to Start Menu

[bulatz]

HP when installed should add shortcut to Hackage to Start Menu. This shortcut should be labelled as "Download libraries" or "Libraries repository" or smth like this to make user know that it is the way to install more libraries from central Internet repository

it may solve conflict between need of more libraries (such as opengl, gtk2hs) required for professional developement and inflation of installer with all these libs

see also http://trac.haskell.org/haskell-platform/ticket/69

[panne]

IMHO this would lead the HP into the wrong direction. Easy installation of single software packages (not necessarily Haskell ones), including their dependencies, is the domain of platform tools like YaST, yum, apt, ... The HP would only try to mirror already existing functionality and will probably do it much worse than tools which already exist for years. Windows is of course a different story, but then we should call this ticket "Build a Haskell-YaST-look-alike for Windows".

The main point of the HP *is* to have a kind of "sumo" installer, containing a large, consistent set of Haskell packages. We should deliberately *not* distinguish between "professional" developers and others, this would again lead to API fragmentation.

[anonymous]

what alternative you propose? just wait until such tool will be written? i think that adding one more line to installer is much faster way to solve problem

[panne]

Maybe I misunderstood the intention behind your proposal. My point is: Even having such a shortcut is no reason at all for keeping the number of packages in the HP small. A small HP serves no purpose at all, one could just revert to plain GHC + cabal-install then.

[anonymous]

i meant that it will decrease pressure. and allow people to easily use packages not yet in HP

[anonymous]

Raise this with the Windows installer people. It is a per-distro decision to add extra features like this.

[refold]

Raise this with the Windows installer people.

I.e. me:-) I'm ok with adding such shortcut, though I doubt that someone who knows about the Haskell Platform haven't heard about Hackage.

[refold]

Fixed in 2009.2.0.2.