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Stack is a perfect example. The people involved have been the ones artificially creating the problem by refusing to follow established community standards (the

Stack is a perfect example. The people involved have been the ones artificially creating the problem by refusing to follow established community standards (the package versioning policy), then they release a tool to "solve" the problem they created, all while spewing FUD about cabal and the actual haskell developers and community.

mcbuilder 10y ago
It's not just people at FP Complete `et al` who were frustrated with cabal-install. Cabal-hell was the number one problem with using Haskell for commercial projects, as a majority of people responded who took part in a FP Complete Haskell organized survey (this was before stack was officially released), https://www.fpcomplete.com/blog/2015/05/thousand-user-haskell-survey https://www.fpcomplete.com/blog/2015/05/thousand-user-haskel.... I wrote that survey, if you want to discuss methodology I would be happy to. Anecdotally, after contacting by email most of the respondents, very few complained of a fragmentation the community by virtue of stack being released. We could argue all day over about arguments on reddit, but data suggests otherwise. FP Complete is a commercial consulting firm now targeting life science companies. We use Haskell because we believe it is the best modern language for robust high-performance software. It is not our goal to own the Haskell ecosystem. It is our goal to promote Haskell use and to develop reliable tooling. Do people feel the same way about continuum analytics for releasing Anaconda and special versions of numpy?
- MustardTiger 10y ago
  That doesn't address what I said at all. People were not frustrated with cabal-install, they were frustrated with package installation errors, and blamed cabal-install and "cabal hell" (despite the vast majority of errors having nothing to do with cabal hell). But the actual problem is widely used packages written by FP complete people deliberately refusing to follow the PvP. Yesod was the biggest example, everyone complained about how impossible it was to install. We did not need a curated set of packages and a backwards package installation tool to solve that problem, we needed the yesod devs to follow the rules. This is exactly what I mean. You create a problem, spread FUD about the problem, then "solve" the problem by conveniently trying to move everyone to your separate ecosystem and tooling.
  - mcbuilder 10y ago
    I would avoid any speculation into malicious and/or manipulative actions. Personally, I think PVP is a beautiful idea, but fails in practice. Even if you were correct in asserting that Yesod devs were intentionally polluting the waters by refusing to supply upper version bounds, such a fragile system clearly shouldn't be the tool of choice for Haskell. BTW, none of my issues with cabal stemmed from FP Complete packages. It was a widespread problem, and it's not spreading FUD to be outspoken about it. People like you really raise the level of name calling to a whole new level. It's open source, people are free to choose what tool they wish to use, develop which tool they wish, and recommend which tools they wish. Believe me, FP Complete is not makings tons of profit in an attempt to convert everyone to Stackage.
    - MustardTiger 10y ago
      It is absolutely spreading FUD to convince new users that simple problems they have are "cabal hell" and are best solved by switching to stack. And being open source does not make anything I said "name calling".
      - Tehnix 10y ago
        You sound like you have never tried to install any sizable haskell package ever... Cabal-hell was a very real problem, and an inordinate amount of time was spent by package maintainers to help people installing their packages, even on the IRC #haskell channel, cabal-hell questions would very frequently pop-up. Also, you FUD about Yesod is not true at all, they followed the PVP closely up until 1.1.0, as another commenter mentioned. Even with the PVP, you would basically have to nuke your cabal packages, or, when sandboxes finally came in cabal, you could use them. Stack completely removes some very real problems with building packages. Honestly, having read all your comments in this thread, you seem to be either a troll, or someone who clearly has no idea of the history of haskell tooling....
        MustardTiger 10y ago
        >You sound like you have never tried to install any sizable haskell package ever. You sound like you have never read what I posted and decided a strawman was better than replying to what I actually said. >Cabal-hell was a very real problem Nobody suggested otherwise. Tricking people into thinking normal errors are "cabal hell" does not mean cabal hell didn't exist.

mcbuilder 10y ago

It's not just people at FP Complete `et al` who were frustrated with cabal-install. Cabal-hell was the number one problem with using Haskell for commercial projects, as a majority of people responded who took part in a FP Complete Haskell organized survey (this was before stack was officially released), https://www.fpcomplete.com/blog/2015/05/thousand-user-haskell-survey https://www.fpcomplete.com/blog/2015/05/thousand-user-haskel.... I wrote that survey, if you want to discuss methodology I would be happy to. Anecdotally, after contacting by email most of the respondents, very few complained of a fragmentation the community by virtue of stack being released. We could argue all day over about arguments on reddit, but data suggests otherwise. FP Complete is a commercial consulting firm now targeting life science companies. We use Haskell because we believe it is the best modern language for robust high-performance software. It is not our goal to own the Haskell ecosystem. It is our goal to promote Haskell use and to develop reliable tooling. Do people feel the same way about continuum analytics for releasing Anaconda and special versions of numpy?

MustardTiger 10y ago
That doesn't address what I said at all. People were not frustrated with cabal-install, they were frustrated with package installation errors, and blamed cabal-install and "cabal hell" (despite the vast majority of errors having nothing to do with cabal hell). But the actual problem is widely used packages written by FP complete people deliberately refusing to follow the PvP. Yesod was the biggest example, everyone complained about how impossible it was to install. We did not need a curated set of packages and a backwards package installation tool to solve that problem, we needed the yesod devs to follow the rules. This is exactly what I mean. You create a problem, spread FUD about the problem, then "solve" the problem by conveniently trying to move everyone to your separate ecosystem and tooling.
- mcbuilder 10y ago
  I would avoid any speculation into malicious and/or manipulative actions. Personally, I think PVP is a beautiful idea, but fails in practice. Even if you were correct in asserting that Yesod devs were intentionally polluting the waters by refusing to supply upper version bounds, such a fragile system clearly shouldn't be the tool of choice for Haskell. BTW, none of my issues with cabal stemmed from FP Complete packages. It was a widespread problem, and it's not spreading FUD to be outspoken about it. People like you really raise the level of name calling to a whole new level. It's open source, people are free to choose what tool they wish to use, develop which tool they wish, and recommend which tools they wish. Believe me, FP Complete is not makings tons of profit in an attempt to convert everyone to Stackage.
  - MustardTiger 10y ago
    It is absolutely spreading FUD to convince new users that simple problems they have are "cabal hell" and are best solved by switching to stack. And being open source does not make anything I said "name calling".
    - Tehnix 10y ago
      You sound like you have never tried to install any sizable haskell package ever... Cabal-hell was a very real problem, and an inordinate amount of time was spent by package maintainers to help people installing their packages, even on the IRC #haskell channel, cabal-hell questions would very frequently pop-up. Also, you FUD about Yesod is not true at all, they followed the PVP closely up until 1.1.0, as another commenter mentioned. Even with the PVP, you would basically have to nuke your cabal packages, or, when sandboxes finally came in cabal, you could use them. Stack completely removes some very real problems with building packages. Honestly, having read all your comments in this thread, you seem to be either a troll, or someone who clearly has no idea of the history of haskell tooling....
      - MustardTiger 10y ago
        >You sound like you have never tried to install any sizable haskell package ever. You sound like you have never read what I posted and decided a strawman was better than replying to what I actually said. >Cabal-hell was a very real problem Nobody suggested otherwise. Tricking people into thinking normal errors are "cabal hell" does not mean cabal hell didn't exist.