ghcup-talk/GHCup.md

% GHCup % Julian Ospald % June 07, 2024

GHCup

Intro

Haskell Survey 2022

What is GHCup?

curl -s -L 'https://downloads.haskell.org/~ghc/9.6.5/ghc-9.6.5-x86_64-fedora33-linux.tar.xz' |
  tar -xJ -C /tmp                              &&
  cd /tmp/ghc-9.6.5-x86_64-unknown-linux/      &&
  ./configure --prefix="$HOME/.local"          &&
  make install                                 &&
  rm -rf /tmp/ghc-9.6.5-x86_64-unknown-linux/

How it started

• 🤹 small team at work on different platforms
• 🧑‍💻 SHELL + POSIX
• 🦾 first version was 165 LOC
• 🙏 only installer at that time was stack

Goals

• ☮️ unification
• unix principles
  • 🛠️ do one thing and do it well
  • ⚗️ pipes, compose stdout and stdin
• 🎁 good re-distribution
• 🛣️ user experience (get out of the way)

To install or not install

• https://hasufell.github.io/posts/2023-11-14-ghcup-is-not-an-installer.html

Concerns

• {#id .class width=32 height=32px} installer
• {#id .class width=32 height=32px} distribution channel
• {#id .class width=32 height=32px} feedback channel
• {#id .class width=32 height=32px} testing/QA
• {#id .class width=32 height=32px} deciding on defaults (e.g. "recommended" GHC version)
• {#id .class width=32 height=32px} holistic toolchain experience
  • stack integration
  • VSCode integration
  • cabal-install integration
• {#id .class width=32 height=32px} CI (e.g. github actions)